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The Notion of Nature in Coleridge and Wordsworth
from the Perspective of Ecotheology
BY
PAUL CHI HUN KIM
A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF
PHILOSOPHY
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERARY
STUDIES
THE UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
October 2013
Table of Contents
Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………. v
Note on Texts and Abbreviations ………………………………………………….... vi
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………….. 2
Chapter 1, Ecotheology as a conceptual framework …………………………….. 18
1. The inter-relatedness of humanity, nature, and God
1.1. Teilhard: matter and spirit ......................................................................... 21
1.2. Teilhard: biosphere, noosphere, and Omega ………………………………… 23
1.3. Moltmann: the relational dynamic of the Trinity …………………............... 27
1.4. Moltmann: the Trinitarian idea of God and creation …………………………29
1.5. A reciprocal relationship over and against a hierarchical one .................. 34
2. The presence of God in the universe: the sacredness of nature
2.1. Teilhard: the cosmic Christ and divine love .............................................. 36
2.2. Moltmann: the cosmic Spirit …………………………………………………….. 39
2.3. The possibility of the transcendence and immanence of God ……………. 40
3. Cosmic eschatology
3.1. The significance of eschatology in ecotheology and theology ................. 45
3.2. Cosmic eschatology in Teilhard and Moltmann …………………….............. 50
Ch. 2, Coleridge’s quest for the unity of the universe ...................................... 57
1. The inter-relatedness of the universe
1.1. The monistic idea of God: Priestley and Spinoza …………………………… 59
1.2. The power of love …………………………………………………………………. 68
1.3. Natural philosophy: polarity and opposition ……………………………......... 76
1.4. The idea of evolution: individuation ……………………………………………. 81
2. The relationship between the mind and nature
2.1. Nature as a projection of the mind ……………………………………………… 84
2.2. The problems of solipsism and dualism ………………………………............. 87
2.3. David Hartley: a scientific approach to the body and mind ………………… 88
2.4. The unity between the external and the internal in ‘The Eolian Harp’…… 96
2.5. The passivity and activity of the mind in ‘The Eolian Harp’ …………........ 99
ii
2.6. An external world and the mind in ‘Dejection: An Ode’ ………………… 104
3. A mutual relationship and a religious aspect in evolution
3.1. A mutual relationship in a passage from The Statesman’s Manual ...... 111
3.2. Martin Buber’s idea of I-Thou ………………………………………………..116
3.3. A religious aspect in imagination and symbol …………………………….. 118
3.4. Symbol and sacrament in nature …………………………………………….. 123
4. The problem of pantheism
4.1. Coleridge’s struggle with pantheism ……………………………………….. 125
4.2. The pantheist controversy in Germany ................................................. 130
4.3. Kant’s transcendental idealism …………………………………………….... 133
4.4. Schelling’s idea of nature as self-subsistence …………………………… 138
4.5. The Trinitarian notion of God in Coleridge ……………………………….. 140
Chapter 3, Wordsworth’s yearning for the sense of dwelling ………………. 147
1. The idea of Dwelling
1.1. Dwelling and the natural environment ……………………………………… 148
1.2. Dwelling and the Divinity ……………………………………………………… 151
1.3. Heidegger’s idea of dwelling …………………………………………………. 154
1.4. The Vale of Esthwaite ………………………………………………………….. 158
2. Dwelling in a cottage in Grasmere
2.1. Fears and anxieties about city-life, uncertainties, and mortality .......... 165
2.2. Dwelling and the inner self in the Ruined Cottage .................................. 171
2.3. The experience of ‘One life’ ..................................................................... 173
2.4. ‘The one great Life’ and ‘one Household under God’ .............................. 182
3. Dwelling in the community of the living and the dead
3.1. A fresh challenge from human mortality ................................................. 189
3.2. Paul de Man and Essays Upon Epitaphs …………………………………….. 191
3.3 Immortality, language, and the permanence of the epitaph ………………. 193
3.4. Religion and the idea of immortality ………………………………………….. 197
3.5. The community of the living and the dead ………………………………….. 199
3.6. The relationship between nature and the graveyard ……………………… 206
4. Heavenly Dwelling
4.1. Ecclesiastical Sonnets …………………………………………………………… 212
4.2. The experience of death in the journey of our life ………………………… 214
4.3. Church architecture as a symbol of heavenly dwelling …………………… 218
4.4. Nature in the heavenly dwelling ……………………………………………….. 222
iii
Chapter 4, Eschatology in Coleridge and Wordsworth ……………………… 230
1. Coleridge
1.1. The French Revolution
1.1.1. Enlightenment, aesthetics and politics, and religion ………………… 231
1.1.2. The French Revolution as apocalypse and millennium ……………… 236
1.1.3. Nature in apocalypse and millennium …………………………………… 243
1.1.4. Coleridge’s disillusionment with the Revolution ……………………… 246
1.2. The revolution of the mind
1.2.1. Hope in a private, domestic and natural sphere ………………………. 250
1.2.2. The revolution of the mind: a moral reformation …………………….. 253
1.2.3. Apocalypse as a symbolic drama ………………………………………… 257
1.2.4. Apocalypse: morality, symbolic drama, an external reality ………… 263
1.2.5. Nature and the Apocalypse as a symbolic drama …………………….. 266
1.3. The final vision of the universe …………………………………………….. 269
2. Wordsworth
2.1.1. The French Revolution as apocalypse and millennium ………………. 270
2.1.2. A lesson of nature and ‘power of strong controul’ in nature ............ 277
2.1.3. Wordsworth’s disillusionment with the Revolution …………………… 279
2.2. The growth of the mind: imagination
2.2.1. Imagination, nature, ‘a new world’ ……………………………………….. 281
2.2.2. ‘A higher power’ in ‘life’s everyday appearances’ ……………………. 284
2.2.3. Apocalypse: a prophetic voice, God, and nature ………………………. 288
2.3. The final vision of the universe ……………………………………………… 295
Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………… 302
Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………. 314
iv
Abstract
This thesis aims to examine the idea of nature in the works of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth from the perspective of ecotheology.
Its intention is not to identify their works with ecotheology, but it will be
suggested how Coleridge’s search for the unity of the universe and
Wordsworth’s
yearning
for
dwelling
relate
to
recent
developments
in
ecotheological theory. Ecotheology can thus help us understand their ideas on
nature. There is a historical and disciplinary gap between the works of the
Romantic Period and ecotheology, and, in Romantic criticism, the idea of nature
is often misunderstood as a mere projection of the mind. Moreover, Coleridge’s
poetry has been the subject of an unjustified ideological criticism that has
misrepresented its theological viewpoints, and Wordsworth has also been read
in terms of a secular narrative about nature and consciousness. However, both
Coleridge and Wordsworth to some extent perceive nature as an environmental
landscape, and therefore nature can be understood as an independent reality as
well as a creation of the mind. They develop ideas of God in their literary works
in a way that needs to be understood not in a secular way, but in a religious
sense. Just as ecotheology attempts to articulate the value of the non-human
natural world, so Coleridge’s notion of unity and Wordsworth’s idea of dwelling
affirm similar values throughout their works.
Focusing in Chapter 1 on the writings of a number of twentieth-century
theologians, including Jűrgen Moltmann and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, I will
outline the development of key ideas in ecotheology in terms of three main
elements, the interrelatedness of the universe, the independent sacred value of
nature, and a cosmic eschatology, which will be used as a conceptual
framework for exploring the works of Coleridge and Wordsworth. Chapter 2 will
show that Coleridge’s lifelong search for the unity of the universe reveals the
interrelatedness of the universe, and the sacredness of nature as an
independent value. Chapter 3 will see that Wordsworth’s idea of dwelling also
implies these two elements. Chapter 4 will show that their eschatological
visions are associated with a cosmic eschatology, of which the non-human
natural world constitutes a crucial part.
v
Note on Texts and Abbreviations
Coleridge
All quotations from Coleridge’s poetry throughout this thesis refer to The
Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2 vols., ed by E. H.
Coleridge (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912), and the Bollingen Series (Princeton
University Press, 1971-) has been used for his prose works.
AR
Aids to Reflection, ed. by John Beer (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993).
BL
Biographia Literaria, 2 vol. ed. by James Engell and W. Jackson
Bate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).
CCS
On the Constitution of the Church and State, ed. by John Colmer
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).
CL
The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. by Earl
Leslie Griggs 6 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 195671).
CM
Marginalia, ed. by George Whalley (Princeton: Princeton
CN
The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. by Kathleen
Coburn (London: Routledge, 2002).
CPW
The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2
vols., ed. by E. H. Coleridge (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912)
Lects. 1795
Lectures 1795 On Politics and Religion, ed. by Lewis Patton
and Peter Mann (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1971).
Friend
The Friend, ed. by Barbara E. Rooke, 2 vols. (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1969).
OM
Opus Maximum, ed. by Thomas McFarland, with the assistance
of Nicholas Halmi (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2002).
SM
The Statesman’s Manual, Lay Sermons, ed. by R. J. White,
Bollingen Series 75 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
vi
1993).
TL
Hints Towards The Formation Of A More Comprehensive
Theory of Life, ed. by Seth B. Watson (London, 1849).
Wordsworth
The quotations from Wordsworth’s poems throughout the thesis, except those
from Ecclesiastical Sonnets, will be keyed to the ‘Reading Text’ in the Cornell
Wordsworth, and quotations from his prose works are from The Prose Works of
William Wordsworth, ed. by W. J. B. Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser, 3 vols,
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974). All citations of the Prelude are from the 1805
version.
E.E.
Essays upon Epitaphs, in Prose II, pp. 43-119.
Guide
A Guide through the District of the Lakes, in Prose II, pp. 123-
253
HG
Home at Grasmere: Part First, Book First, of The Recluse, ed.
by Beth Darlington (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press,
1977).
L.B.
Lyrical Ballads, ed. by James Butler and Karen Green (Ithaca,
New York: Cornell University Press, 1992).
LLandaff
A Letter to the Bishop of LLandaff, in Prose I, pp. 17-66.
Prose
The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, 3 vols., ed. by W. J. B.
Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974)
VE
The Vale of Esthwaite, in Early Poems and Fragments, 17851797, ed. by Carol Landon and Jared Curtis (Ithaca, New York:
Cornell University Press, 1977).
WL
The Collected Letters of the Wordsworths (Charlottesville, Va.:
InteLex
Corporation,
2002)
http://pm.nlx.com/xtf/view;jsessionid=37EB240D10E88F4E3DF
3673681F8A066?docId=wordsworths_c/wordsworths_c.00.xml;
chunk.id=div.el.wordsworth.pmpreface.1;toc.depth=1;toc.id=div
.el.wordsworth.pmpreface.1;brand=default
February 2013].
vii
[accessed
23
Others
BDT
Martin Heidegger, ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’, in Poetry,
Language, Thought, trans. by Albert Hofstadter (New York:
Harper and Row, Publishers, 1971), pp. 143-161.
HU
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed.
by Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).
HOM
David Hartley, Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and
his Expectations (London, 1801).
viii
Introduction
This thesis aims to examine the idea of nature in the works of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth from the perspective of ecotheology.
Ecotheology is a discipline that has only recently emerged, one which tries to
re-discover the importance of nature by underlining the intrinsic value of the
non-human natural world as part of God’s creation and articulating a relational
dynamic among humanity, nature, and God. Both Coleridge and Wordsworth
were deeply aware of the importance of such a dynamic and attempted to
articulate the relationship in their works in their own particular ways. While
Coleridge searches for the unity of the universe – humanity and nature and God
- on a theoretical level, Wordsworth looks for an ideal place for dwelling within
the context of the relationship among them on an experiential level. The two
authors’ ways of developing the relationship relate to recent developments in
nature.
In fact, a number of critics have already attempted to investigate
Romanticism in the light of ecology. As part of various critical responses to the
environmental
crisis,
ecological
literary
criticism,
or
ecocriticism,
has
developed over the last two decades. In his ‘Introduction’ to Writing the
Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature (1998), Richard Kerridge suggests a
wide cultural definition of ecocriticism as ‘moving beyond science, geography
and social science into the humanities’:
2
The ecocritic wants to track environmental ideas and representations
wherever they appear, to see more clearly a debate which seems to be
taking place, often part-concealed, in a great many cultural spaces. Most
of all, ecocriticism seeks to evaluate texts and ideas in terms of their
coherence and usefulness as responses to environmental crisis.1
As a field of literary enquiry, ecological literary criticism thus aims to ‘reflect
and help to shape human responses to the natural environment’ by ‘studying the
representation of the physical world in literary texts and in the social contexts
of their production’.2 In other words, ecocriticism investigates the meaning of
the relationship between humanity and nature in terms of literary attempts to
highlight values in the non-human natural world. Although the movement
started rather earlier in the 1970s and 1980s in the United States, most critics
acclaim the later scholar Jonathan Bate as ‘a leading example of a significant
early step in the evolution of ecocriticism’, especially in British Romanticism.3
1
Richard Kerridge, ‘Introduction’, in Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and literature, ed. by
Richard Kerridge and Neil Sammells (London: Zed Books, 1998), pp. 1-10 (p. 5). See also Greg
Garrard, Ecocriticism, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 4.
2
Kevin Hutchings, ‘Ecocriticism in British Romantic Studies’, Literature Compass, 4 (2007),
172-202 (p. 172).
3
Robert Waller wrote on ‘Enclosures: the ecological significance of a poem by John Clare’ in
Mother Earth, Journal of the Soil Association in 1963. Thomas Lyon has an important essay on
‘The ecological vision of Gary Snyder’ in the Kansas Quarterly in 1970. Glen A. Love, a tireless
propagandist for ecological criticism, wrote on ‘Ecology in Arcadia’ in the Colorado Quarterly in
1972. In 1974, the first book-length critical study was published, Joseph Meeker’s The Comedy
of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology. William Ruekert on ‘Literature and ecology: an
experiment in criticism’ in the Iowa Review in 1978. Don Elgin’s ‘What is “literary ecology?”’ in
Humanities in the South in 1983. See, Tony Pinkney, ‘Romantic Ecology’ in A Companion to
Romanticism,
ed.
by
Duncan
Wu,
Blackwell
Publishing,
1999.
<
http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/uid=959/book?id=g9780631198529_97806311985
29> [accessed 3 September 2012]. In particular, the Association for the Study of Literature and
Environment (ASLE) was established in 1992, and ecocriticism ‘quickly became a burgeoning field
of inquiry in American academia’ with the founding of ASLE’s journal Interdisciplinary Studies in
Literature and Environment (ISLE) in 1993, and the publication of The Ecocriticism Reader:
Landmarks in Literary Ecology in 1996. See Kevin Hutchings, ‘Ecocriticism in British Romantic
Studies’, p. 173; Timothy Clark, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment
(Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 15. See also, Pinkney, ‘Romantic
3
As a matter of fact, Karl Kroeber ‘first introduced explicitly ecological concepts
to British Romantic Studies with his essay “Home at Grasmere: Ecological
Holiness”’ (1974), but it was Bate’s Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the
Environmental Tradition (1991) that ‘brought green Romanticism to widespread
critical attention, inspiring and provoking numerous critical responses, and
setting the terms of much subsequent dialogue and debate within the new field
of Romantic ecocriticism’. 4 This manifesto for romantic ecology was then
followed by Karl Kroeber’s Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Imagining
and the Biology of Mind (1994) and James McKusick’s Green Writing:
Romanticism and Ecology (2000).
The ecological reading of Romantic poetry constituted a radical challenge
to the existing way of understanding the Romantic tradition in terms of literary
theories of the ambivalent relationship between consciousness and nature.
Ecological literary criticism regards established literary theories as a
misleading way of reading Romanticism. The theories of deconstruction and
poststructuralism of the 1970s stressed the idea of textuality, rather than
representation,
as
the
dominant
literary
term
for
reading
texts.
For
poststructuralists, language over and against material reality is the only world
to which we can have access, with the result that nature can exist only as
signified within language and culture. Especially Coleridge’s association with
German Idealism and Wordsworth’s development of the power of the mind or
Ecology’; Lawrence Buell, ‘The Ecocritical Insurgency’, in New Literary History, 30 (1999), 699712 (pp. 700-1); Laurence Coupe, ‘General Introduction’, in The Green Studies Reader: from
Romanticism to Ecocriticism, ed. by Laurence Coupe (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 1-8 (p. 6);
Garrard, Ecocriticism, p. 4; Hutchings, ‘Ecocriticism in British Romantic Studies’, p. 173.
4
Hutchings, ‘Ecocriticism in British Romantic Studies’, p. 196.
4
consciousness may thus create the impression that their notion of nature is a
projection of the mind. Then the 1980s gave rise to a kind of politically
responsible criticism, a leftist new historicism. For his part, Alan Liu has made
the notorious claim that ‘there is no nature except as it is constituted by acts of
political definition’.5 Considering Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s retreat into the
Lake District with their disillusionment with the French Revolution, there may
be a lack of historicity or a social context in their notion of nature. Accordingly,
for the historicists, their notion of nature has a kind of deficiency. As Jonathan
Bate points out, ‘the human mind is superior to nature’ in the idealist reading of
Romanticism in the 1960s, and ‘the economy of human society is more
important than the economy of nature’ in the post-Althusserian Marxist critique
of Romanticism in the 1980s.6
Ecological literary criticism, however, repudiates current literary practices
by challenging such approaches to the notion of nature. It seeks to uncover how
nature exists as an independent material reality in Romantic poetry; how
humanity and nature are interrelated in the Romantic tradition. In his Romantic
Ecology, Bate suggests that we may re-discover Wordsworth as ‘Poet of
Nature’, who ‘articulated a powerful and enduring vision of human integration
with nature’, and consequently ‘to relearn Wordsworth’s way of looking at
nature’.7 Bate examines the materiality of nature by referring to Guide to the
Lakes and Naming of Places sequence of poems from Lyrical Ballads in
5
Alan Liu, Wordsworth: the Sense of History (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1989), p.
104.
6
Jonathan Bate, Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition (London:
Routledge, 1991), p. 9.
7
Ibid., p. 9.
5
Romantic Ecology, and he focuses on the interrelatedness of the humanities and
environment in his The Song of the Earth (2001). Referring to his alignment
with Bate’s criticism of recent academic criticism of romantic poetry, Karl
Kroeber also rejects ‘rhetorical formalists (those of Yale School)’ and ‘the new
historicists’,
who
‘dismissed
romantic
description
of
nature
as
mere
displacements of unconscious political motives’. 8 In his Ecological Literary
Criticism, Kroeber tries to find how natural and cultural processes are
interrelated: how ‘nature is a social construct’; how ‘human consciousness is a
result of natural processes’; how ‘society arises out of humankind’s place in the
natural world’. 9 He presupposes ‘the romantics’ most intense, original, and
enduringly significant discoveries of humanity’s place in the natural world’ in
the sense that ‘they believed that humankind belonged in, could and should be
at home within, the world of natural processes’.10 They aspired thus to ‘relate
cultural productions to natural conditions’
so that ‘nature and human
consciousness were splendidly adapted to one another’.11 For instance, Kroeber
argues that, in Coleridge’s ‘France: An Ode’, ‘the authentic sprit of liberty’ can
be found ‘in natural processes’ in the sense that ‘true freedom of spirit
underlying political libertarianism is to be found by engaging ourselves with
natural processes.’12
8
Karl Kroeber, Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Imagining and the Biology of Mind (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 2.
9
Ibid., p. 17.
10
Ibid., pp. 2, 5-6.
11
Ibid., pp. 12, 15.
12
Ibid., pp. 12-13. For this argument, he quotes a passage from that poem, ‘Thou speedest on
thy subtle pinions, / The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves! / And there I felt
thee on that sea-cliff’s verge, / Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above, / Had made
one murmur with the distant surge! / Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, / And shot
my being through earth, sea, and air, / Possessing all things with intensest love, / O Liberty! My
spirit felt thee there.’ (ll. 97-105).
6
If established approaches have been hostile to the idea of the organic unity
of a literary work in the light of a hermeneutic of suspicion, both Bate and
Kroeber attempt to reassess that unity in a positive and constructive way over
and against deconstructive and new historicist approaches. And yet, it seems
that the debate needs to continue to develop. On the one hand, the ecological
criticism of Romanticism is valuable as it has brought back into literary criticism
an idea of nature that exists beyond a projection of the mind. It makes us aware
of the significance of our relationship with nature within the context of today’s
ecological crisis, ‘rejecting instrumentalism, but esteeming intrinsic value,
repersonalizing, resacralizing, and respiritualizing the natural environment’. 13
On the other hand, how far the unity of mind and nature can be viable in a sense
that, particularly for Coleridge and Wordsworth, the idea of nature is partly
created by the power of the mind needs to be investigated. Romantic poetry
manifests a complicated relationship between humanity and nature, one in which
the tension arising from the ambivalent relationship between mind and nature
cannot be completely resolved.
Both ecological literary criticism and ecotheology thus have the common
purpose of re-discovering the meaning of nature and re-establishing a close
relationship between the human and nature. Although these two disciplines are
closely related to the notion of nature, there is a crucial difference between
their perspectives. For some environmentalists, one of the main concerns is
how to overcome anthropocentrism, which sees the world from the perspective
13
See, Robert Kirkham, ‘The Problem of Knowledge in Environmental Thought: A
Counterchallenge’, in The Ecological Community: Environmental Challenges for Philosophy,
Politics and Morality, ed. by Roger S. Gottlieb (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 193-207 (p. 194).
See also Clark, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment, pp. 13-14.
7
of human interests and resources. For instance, deep ecology tries to
differentiate itself from other areas of ecology by ‘beginning to question
anthropocentrism’.
14
Lynn White Jr. makes an interesting comment on
Christianity and ecology: ‘Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious,
the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not.’15
In other words, he criticises Christianity for developing a dualism of man and
nature and so becoming an anthropocentric religion. Alistair McIlgorm also
refers to an intimate relationship in Christianity between humanity and nature in
that ‘creation is seen as God’s work and speaks to us of the transcendent God’,
but at the same time he points out that this relationship has been broken in the
sense that ‘Greek thinking has influenced theology and incorporated the
dividedness of the enlightenment mindset’ and ‘people hide from God self
evidences Himself in nature’. 16 As a result, ecotheology has emerged as a
religious response to the environmental crisis by re-discovering the intimate
relationship between God and the world, in which God reveals Himself not only
through Jesus Christ but also through creation (His works): ‘in all, through all
and over all’ (Ephesians 4:6); ‘in him everything lives and moves and has its
being’ (Acts 17:28).17 God also reveals Himself through nature, which implies
clearly the intrinsic value of nature.
The uniqueness of ecotheology as against ecology lies indeed in the idea
that nature itself can maintain its own independent value owing to its
14
John Sitter, ‘Eighteenth-Century Ecological Poetry and Ecotheology’, Religion and Literature,
40 (2008), 11-37 (p. 32).
15
Lynn White Jr, ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’, Science, New Series, 155 (1967),
1203-1207.
16
Alistair McIlgorm, ‘Towards an Eco-Theology of Fisheries Management?’ Citeseer (2000) <
http://uow.academia.edu/alistairmcilgorm> [accessed 30 November 2012], p. 2.
17
Ibid., p. 2.
8
relationship with God. Whereas ecological literary criticism tries to formulate
the meaning of nature by examining the materiality of nature and the
interdependence of mankind and nature – either being able to overcome
anthropocentrism or within its context - an ecotheological perspective
professes the independent and intrinsic value of nature as based on the believed
fact that it is created by God and that the Creator still reveals Himself through
it. In this respect, the ecotheological perspective on Romanticism is different
from the ecological reading of Romanticism in that the former investigates the
significance of nature in Romanticism within the context of the relationship
between the Creator and the creation. It is not intended to claim that an
ecotheological perspective is superior to an ecological approach, but merely to
draw attention to their different ways of perceiving the universe. Some critics
point out how the two disciplines have cooperated with each other. For some
Christian theologians, the ecological movement has enabled them to rediscover the value of nature in Christianity; for ecologists, ‘a principal source of
their prophetic and egalitarian principles lies in the symbolic wealth of the
biblical tradition.’ 18 One of the main reasons for discussing Coleridge and
Wordsworth from an ecotheological perspective is that their works represent
the relational aspect between God and creation in a profound way. Just as
ecotheology is the ‘rediscovery of ecological themes in a variety of religious
texts’, an ecotheological way of reading Coleridge and Wordsworth can bring to
light a relational theme between humanity and nature and God in their works. In
18
Ronald J. Engel, ‘Democracy, Christianity, Ecology: A Twenty-First-Century Agenda for Ecotheology’, Cross Currents, 61 (2011), 217-231 (p. 229).
9
other words, their works evince a sincere religious dimension.19
As a matter of fact, an investigation of their ideas on religion reveals a
complicated picture of the issue. First, their attitudes towards religion changed
over the course of their careers. Before turning to orthodox Christianity,
Coleridge was a follower of Unitarianism and Wordsworth was interested in
mystical experience through nature. Secondly, as Emma Mason put it,
‘twentieth-century criticism has tended to investigate religion either as an
oppressive ideology or as the basis of a form of Dissent struggling to free itself
of the transcendent to achieve a status as a form of secular politics.’20 The
religious aspects of the works of Coleridge and Wordsworth have been either
neglected or misrepresented.
Hedley, for instance, indicates that
‘the
institutional parameters of twentieth-century English Literature have tended to
marginalise the religious and philosophical core of Coleridge’s thought’.21 M. H.
Abrams saw the religious aspects of Wordsworth in terms of a humanistic
secularization of Christian doctrine, rather than a form of religion. In his Natural
Supernaturalism, Abrams asks the question, ‘what does God do in The Prelude?’
and answers, ‘Nothing of consequence.’ Though a number of passages refer to
God, they do not signify any profound religious thought:
God is at intervals ceremoniously alluded to, but remains an adventitious
and nonoperative factor; if all allusions to deity were struck out of The
Prelude, there would be no substantive change in its subject matter or
19
Anne Hallum, ‘Ecotheology and Environmental Praxis in Guatemala’, Nova Religio, 7 (2003),
55-70 (p. 55). Quoted by Sitter, ‘Eighteenth-Century Ecological Poetry and Ecotheology’, p. 11.
20
Emma Mason, ‘Romanticism and Religion’, Literature Compass, 1 (2004), 1-4 (p. 2).
21
Douglas Hedley, Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion: Aids to Reflection and the Mirror of the
Spirit (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 3.
10
development. God is the purely formal remainder of His former self.22
Abrams conceives the poem from the perspective of ‘the secularization of
inherited theological ideas and ways of thinking’ within the context of the
Enlightenment and French Revolution.23 In the 1980s Kenneth Johnston likewise
argued that the subject of ‘Man, Nature and Human Life’ in Wordsworth’s grand
project of The Recluse, including The Prelude, The Excursion, The Ruined
Cottage, and Home at Grasmere, was ‘to have displaced outmoded religious
epics
(and
perhaps
religious
scriptures
themselves)
with
persuasive
representations of a humanistic philosophy’.24
On the contrary, in the ecotheological reading of Coleridge and Wordsworth
of this thesis, I aim to show that religion is one of the keys to understanding
their works. I will not, however, read these texts as ecotheological texts, and
do not intend to try to compare or unify the two different disciplines of
literature and theology. Throughout the whole thesis, the two disciplines keep
their boundaries. By using ecotheology as a conceptual framework for analysing
the poetry of Coleridge and Wordsworth, it seems possible to show how their
works anticipate and can be elucidated by some key ideas of ecotheology. One
of the possible explanations of how literary texts of Coleridge and Wordsworth
are able to bear theological ideas derives from the intimate relationship itself
between literature and theology. Although literature has been regarded as a
way of confirming or preparing for belief, or as a way of challenging, even
22
M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature
(London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 90.
23
Ibid., p. 12.
24
Kenneth R. Johnston, Wordsworth and The Recluse (New Haven, London: Yale University
Press, 1984), p. xii.
11
nullifying it, literature and theology often share a territory, ‘one at once
aesthetic and theological’. 25 On the one hand, the Second Vatican Council
argued that ‘the exegete [of the Bible] must look for that meaning which the
sacred writer, in a determined situation and given the circumstances of his time
and culture, intended to express and did in fact express, through the medium of
a contemporary literary form’ (Dei Verbum, nn. 12). On the other, Mary Wedd
maintains that Romantic poets ‘forged an art that was concerned with the
deepest and most important elements of human life [. . .] the consciousness of a
deeper reality than that of everyday material and mundane existence’.26 William
Blake, for instance, fuses the two areas of religion and literature in developing
Christianity as the fulfillment of a prophetic tradition through his poetry and
art.27
Likewise, both Coleridge and Wordsworth embody religious ideas explicitly
and implicitly in their literary works. A number of critics have discussed the
significance of religion in their work, including Robert Barth, Stephen Prickett,
David Jasper, and Robert Ryan. 28 Such scholars uncover various theological
25
See Giles Gunn, ‘Literature and Religion’, in Interrelations of Literature, ed. by J. Barricelli and
J. Gibaldi (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1982), pp. 47-66 (pp. 47-8);
Mason, ‘Romanticism and Religion’, p. 1; see also, Ecospirit: Religions and Philosophies for the
Earth, ed. by Laurel Kearns and Catherine Keller (New York: Fordham UP, 2007).
26
Nicholas Boyle explores the issue of understanding the Bible as a literary work from the
hermeneutics point of view, in Sacred and Secular Scriptures (Notre Dame: Notre Dame
Mary
Wedd,
‘Literature
and
Religion’,
in A
Companion to Romanticism <
29> [accessed 3 September 2012].
27
See, Mason, ‘Romanticism and Religion’, p. 1.
28
Robert Barth, Coleridge and Christian Doctrine (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1969), Romanticism and Transcendence: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the religious imagination
(Columbia; London: University of Missouri Press, 2003); Stephen Prickett, Romanticism and
Religion: the tradition of Coleridge and Wordsworth in the Victorian church (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1976); David Jasper, Coleridge as poet and religious thinker:
inspiration and revelation (London: Macmillan, 1985); Robert Ryan, The Romantic Reformation:
Religious politics in English literature, 1789-1824 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
12
aspects in the works of Coleridge and Wordsworth. Focusing on the idea of
imagination in Coleridge and Wordsworth, Barth discusses how the creativity of
God can be recognised through an imaginative experience. Prickett shows how
poetry, theology and metaphysics are combined together in the two authors’
works. The language of poetry as metaphorical, symbolic and bi-focal,
empowers the two poets to express transcendent reality through the power of
the imagination. There is no doubt that their works are fundamentally
associated with a religious consciousness, but a thorny issue arises with
Wordsworth’s early poetry in which the idea of God is often regarded as ‘the
secularization of inherited theological ideas’. 29 Whereas Coleridge wrote in
1802, ‘if there be any two subjects which have in the very depth of my nature
interested me, it has been the Hebrew and Christian Theology and the Theology
of Plato’, he wrote John Prior Estlin in May 1798 that ‘on one subject we are
habitually silent [. . .] he[Wordsworth] loves and venerates Christ &
Christianity – I wish he did more.’ 30 Although Wordsworth expresses his
experience of a spiritual [or mystical] world through nature in his early poetry,
it seems that he was not interested in the Church’s teachings in the same way.
Nevertheless, his personal experience can be deeply religious on the grounds
that the definition of religion is not subject only to a set of teachings and a
belief system, but is also based upon the dynamic of personal experience.
Intriguingly, critics like Prickett, Ryan, and Jonathan Bate point out that
Wordsworth had an enormous influence upon Victorian religious writings.
1997); see also, Colin Jager, The Book of God: Secularization and Design in the Romantic Era
(Philadelphia: Pennsylvania, 2007).
29
Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 12.
30
CL II, p. 867; CL I, p. 411.
13
When we analyse Romantic poetry from an ecotheological perspective, the
problem of the historical gap between them appears. On the one hand,
ecotheology is a contextual theology that emerged from the historical context
of the ecological crisis caused by human destructive and exploitative attitudes
towards nature that has become evident only since the 1960s. On the other
hand, the historical context of Romanticism is different in that it was not a
response to an ecological crisis as such. In this respect, new historicist critics’
claims seem to be fair that Romanticism cannot engage with ‘modern
environmental concerns on the grounds that to use them in this way is a gross
misrepresentation of the historical realities in which the Romantics wrote and
thought’.31 In other words, Romanticism should not be used by modern critics as
a means to construct contemporary ecological criticism.
However, attention should be paid to the underlying continuity between the
concerns of ecotheology and those of nineteenth-century Romantic writers in
terms of ecological consciousness. Some critics actually attempt to discover
‘the historical continuity of a tradition of environmental consciousness’ in
Romanticism. 32 Timothy Clark, for example, locates ‘the initial impetus of
modern ecocriticism’ in the Romantic tradition of ‘opposition to the destructive
tendencies of enlightenment ideals of the conquest of nature, the market-based
economy and industrialism’.33 Referring to Wordsworth’s A Guide through the
District of the Lakes, Jonathan Bate asserts that Wordsworth was aware of an
31
John J O’Keefe, ‘The Persistence of Grasmere: Contemporary Catholic Environmental
Theology and the Romantic Impulse’, Journal of Religion and Soceity, 3 (2008) <
http://hdl.handle.net/10504/24729> [accessed 21 June 2010] (para. 4 of 32).
32
Bate, Romantic Ecology, p. 9.
33
Clark, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment, p. 13.
14
environmental issue related to industrialism. In the Guide, Wordsworth reaffirms
the harmony between man and his natural environment in a sense that ‘the hand
of man’ is ‘incorporated with and subservient to the powers and processes of
Nature’.34 This sense of harmony, however, is threatened by the destructive
power of industrialism. The poet criticises new residents for building their new
houses on obtrusive sites where they do not ‘harmonize with the forms of
Nature’, whereas they should be ‘styled the co-partner and sister of Nature’.
He describes ‘the larch-plantations’ as ‘all gross transgressions’ because these
‘artificial’ plantations bring about environmentally and aesthetically – ‘insipid
and lifeless’ - harmful effects to the ‘original’ landscape. He laments the decline
of cottage industry due to ‘the invention and universal application of
machinery’.35 Further, in his letter to the Morning Post, Wordsworth expressed
his objection to the projected Kendal and Windermere Railway partly because
he believed large-scale organized Sunday outings would cause environmental
damage to the landscape.36 In this respect, the historical context of ecotheology
to some extent finds a common ground with that of Romanticism in terms of an
environmental consciousness.
First of all, in Chapter 1, a theory of ecotheology will be formulated to be
used as a conceptual framework for reading the works of Coleridge and
Wordsworth. It is hard to pinpoint one single main stream of ecotheology
because it is still a developing discipline and has various branches, for example,
34
Guide, p. 201. See also, Bate, Romantic Ecology, pp. 46-47.
Guide, pp. 209-212, 224.
36
‘Kendal and Windermere Railway’, in Prose, iii, 340-356. Wordsworth’s letter was published in
the Morning Post on 11 December 1844. It is printed with commentary by the editor in Alexander
B Grosart’s Prose Works of William Wordsworth . . . in three Volumes (1876), ii. pp. 330-3, see,
Oliver Goldsmith: The Critical Heritage, ed. by G. S. Rousseau (London: Routledge, 1974; repr.
35
1995), p. 301.
15
deep ecology, eco-feminist theology, liberation theology, and process theology.
Nevertheless, the main purpose of ecotheology is to re-discover the meaning of
nature, which will be traced through three key elements of ecotheology: the
interrelatedness of the universe, the independent sacred value of nature, and a
cosmic eschatology. The intrinsic value of the non-human world will be sought
by articulating the sacredness of nature through the immanence of God within it,
by developing the interrelatedness of humanity and nature within the context of
God’s presence in the universe, and by examining the significance and
necessity of an eschatological vision for the non-human world. In order to do so,
the study will identify and analyse mostly the ideas of two theologians, Teilhard
de Chardin and Moltmann. The former is regarded as a pioneering thinker of
ecotheology and the latter as one of its major theologians.
Chapter 2 will show that the works of Coleridge have two essential
ecotheological notions, the interrelatedness of the universe and the sacredness
of the nonhuman natural world. One of Coleridge’s lifelong aims was to discover
the unity of the universe, which he often identified with the idea of the one life.
It is noteworthy that his grand theory of unity is always based upon three main
elements, human beings, nature, and God. When he was interested in
Unitarianism, he expressed the unity of humanity and nature through the
Omnipresence of God. Later he uses the theory of Naturphilosophie to articulate
how all the elements of the universe are interrelated with one another. It will be
also shown that this notion of the unity brings about an independent sacred
value of nature in terms of three aspects, sacredness, materiality, and mutuality.
Chapter 3 formulates the claim that, like Coleridge, Wordsworth formulates
16
the two ecotheological elements in his poetry. For him, these two elements find
expression in the notion of dwelling which he continues to develop throughout
his career as a poet. He always tries to establish the concept of dwelling by
bringing together three key factors, a dweller, a natural environment, and God.
In the first phase, he locates the ideal place for dwelling in a valley which,
together with his cottage, creates a sense of harmony under the presence of
God. In the second phase, he associates dwelling with the community of the
living and the dead, which represents a sense of interrelatedness, based on the
religious notion of immortality in God, and the soothing, beautiful, egalitarian
and epitaphic aspects of nature. In the final stage, he looks at the heavenly
dwelling, in which the interrelatedness is still of great significance.
Lastly, Chapter 4 will discuss the key role that the natural world plays in
Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s eschatological visions. Ecotheology is committed
to the inclusion of the non-human natural world in eschatology. The two poets
develop eschatological visions throughout their works. They enthusiastically
interpreted the French Revolution as an apocalyptic event. After their
disillusionment with the Revolution, Coleridge located the transformation of the
world in the transformation of the mind, and Wordsworth in the growth of the
mind and imagination. Finally, they referred to the final vision of the universe.
What matters here is that nature constitutes a crucial part in each stage of their
eschatological visions.
17
Chapter 1
Ecotheology as a conceptual framework
In this chapter, an attempt will be made to formulate a theory of
ecotheology which will provide a conceptual framework for reading the works
of Coleridge and Wordsworth. Ecotheology is a contextual theology in the sense
that this new discipline has emerged from the specific historical context of
ecological crisis. 1 It is a theological response to the issue of environmental
degradation. Concern for the environment and ecology developed and
intensified during the 1960s and 1970s, and it was during the 1960s that
environmental concerns became aligned with religious concerns. A number of
theologians have referred to the necessity of a new understanding of theology
in the light of a theological response to the environmental crisis.2 Ecotheology
is thus concerned with the non-human world, discovering its intrinsic value.3 In
1
Celia Deane-Drummond, Eco-Theology (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2008), p. x.
See H. Paul Santimire, Nature Reborn: The Ecological and Cosmic Promise of Christian
Theology (Minneapolis, MN, 2000), pp. 6-16; Deane-Drummond, Eco-Theology, p. ix-xv; Ruth
Page, God and the Web of Creation (London: SCM, 1996), pp. ix-xix; Thomas Berry, ‘The New
Story’, Teilhard Studies, 1 (1978); Sigurd Bergmann, Creation set free: the Spirit as Liberator of
Nature (Grand Rapids, Mich.; Cambridge: Eerdmans; [Edinburgh: Alban, distributor], 2005), pp.
19-21, 41-47; Denis Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God: an ecological theology (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis, 1995), pp. 13-15.
3
Eco-feminist theology sees the domination of both nature and women by men as the root cause
of the modern crisis. French feminist Francoise d’Eaubonne set up Ecologie-Feminisme in 1972
as part of the project of ‘launching a new action: ecofeminism’ and in 1974 published a chapter
entitled ‘The Time for Ecofeminism’ in her book Feminism or Death. In the United States, the
term ecofeminism was used at Murray Bookchin’s Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont in about
1976 to identify courses as ecological, namely, eco-technology, eco-agriculture, and
ecofeminism. The course on ecofeminism was taught by Ynestra King, who used the concept in
1980 as a major theme for the conference. King conceptualized ecological feminism as a
transformative feminism drawing on the insights of both radical cultural feminism and socialist
feminism. Australian philosopher Val Plumwood extends the analysis of domination initiated by
d’Eaubonne and King by comparing the debates between deep ecologists, social ecologists, and
ecofeminists; Ecotheology’s association with liberation theology is concerned with the link
between development and the environment in relation to development of impoverished parts of
the world and suppressed native cultures. See Leonardo Boff, Cry of the Earth: Cry of the Poor
2
18
his article, ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis’ (1967), Lynn White Jr
blamed Christianity for establishing a dualism between man and nature, being
the most anthropocentric religion, and exploiting and dominating nature.4 The
dualistic thinking of Christianity and its emphasis on transcendental monotheism
are seen as the cause of the ecological crisis in that the separation of human
from nature on the one hand and God’s absolute otherness from nature on the
other entitled people to undermine the significance of nature and to exploit it
for their own sake. In this respect, ecotheology amounts to a critique of
traditional theology in an attempt at re-discovering the intrinsic value of the
non-human world.5
Here we need to distinguish ecotheology from secular ecological thought.
Both ecology and ecotheology are concerned with an appropriate relationship
between humanity and nature, but they differ in their understanding of the value
of nature. Ecology makes us aware of the significance of nature in the sense
that it is useful and vital to the well-being and survival of humanity on earth.
The ethics of ecology is instrumentalist in so far as it does not explicitly defend
the intrinsic value of nature. By contrast, ecotheology insists upon the origin
and intrinsic value of nature in terms of God’s creation.6 Nature is significant
(Maryknoll, N. Y.: Orbis Books, 1997), Ecology and Liberation: A New Paradigm (Maryknoll, N.
Y.: Orbis Books, 1995); Denis Edwards, Earth Revealing, Earth Healing (Collegeville: The
Liturgical Press, 2001); Sarah White and Romy Tiongco, Doing Theology and Development:
Meeting the Challenge of Poverty (Edinburgh: St Andrew’s Press, 1997).
4
Lynn White Jr, ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’, Science, New Series, 155 (1967),
1203-1207; Arnold Toynbee also regards the rise of monotheism and the command of the
Genesis 1:28 as the fundamental cause for degrading nature, see, Steven Bouma-Prediger, The
Greening of Theology: the Ecological Models of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Joseph Sittler, Jűrgen
Moltmann (Atlanta, Ga: Scholars Press, 1995), pp. 2-4. ; see also, Ken Gnanakan, God’s World:
Biblical Insights for a Theology of the Environment (London: SPCK, 1999), pp. 2-18.
5
In Nature Reborn, Santmire mentions a paradigm shift from ‘the paradigm of God and humanity
to the paradigm of God, humanity, and nature’, p. 13.
6
Professor Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg and Fazlun Khalid maintains that the Abrahamic religious
19
and meaningful because of this intrinsic value. It can be thus suggested that
ecotheology
understands
the
significance
and
value
of
nature
more
fundamentally than ecology.
Having referred to the significance of the intrinsic value of nature, I shall
discuss it in relation to three elements which, it is claimed, are the central
pillars of ecotheology: the inter-relatedness of the universe, the presence of
God, and eschatology. First, we will examine the inter-relationship between
humanity and nature and God; secondly, we will see how, according to
ecotheology, the presence of God in the universe is not pantheism but
panentheism7; lastly, we will see how, for ecotheology, even the non-human
traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, conceive nature not as an instrument but as a
creation of God; ‘Religion and Nature: The Abrahamic faith’s concepts of creation’, in Spirit of the
environment: religion, value, and environmental concern, ed. by David E. Cooper and Joy Palmer
(London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 30-41 (p. 31); In 1973, Naess published a foundational article,
‘The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement’, Inquiry 16 (1973), 95-100. Naess
felt that the normal conservationists view of environment – one that looked at nature only in its
value for humans and not for nature’s sake, was shallow. Shallow ecology perpetuated the
anthropocentric Western view, one that saw nature as existing only to serve human ends. In
contrast, deep ecology goes beyond the limited piecemeal shallow approach to environmental
problems and attempts to articulate a comprehensive religious and philosophical worldview,
recognising the need for identity for all the constituent elements of our environment and a
biocentric equality of all the elements and individuals within ecosystems. A major compilation of
sources was published by Bill Devall and George Sessions under the title Deep Ecology: Living as
if Nature Mattered (Salt Lake City: G. M. Smith, 1985), and Naess revised the issues in Ecology,
Community, and Lifestyle, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). In 1991 by Australian
philosopher Freya Mathews’s development of the foundations of Deep Ecology in relation to the
principles of interconnectedness, intrinsic value, and self-realizing systems in her book The
ecological Self (London: Routledge, 1991); The Protestant theologian John Cobb made substantial
contributions to Christian thought about nature by formulating the notion of ecotheology in the
light of the writings of the twentieth century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. In his most
important book, Process and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press, 1929), Whitehead
proposed ‘a philosophy of organism’, in which every organism is constituted by its set of relations
with the rest of the world. An organism is a series of events that Whitehead called ‘occasions’.
Thus all individuals have their intrinsic value, and all things are internally related to their
environments. See, John Cobb, Is It Too Late? A Theology of Ecology (Beverley Hills, Calif.:
Bruce, 1972); John Cobb and David R. Griffin, ‘The Global Crisis and a Theology of Survival’, in
Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), pp. 143158; ‘Process Theology and Environmental Issues’, Journal of Religion, October (1980), 440-58.
7
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church defines panentheism as ‘the belief that the Being
of God includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every part of it exists in Him, but (as
against Pantheism) that His Being is more than, and is not exhausted by, the universe’, ed. by F. L.
20
world is included in an eschatological vision. The aim here is not to establish a
new perspective about ecotheology, but to develop some crucial aspects of the
discipline to help with the understanding of Coleridge and Wordsworth. To do
so, reference will be made to the ideas of a number of theologians, particularly,
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Jürgen Moltmann.8 Teilhard (1881-1955) was a
French philosopher, Jesuit Catholic priest, paleontologist and geologist. His
thoughts provide a pioneering and foundational model for a new cosmology.
Although ecotheology had not emerged during his lifetime, his understanding of
the universe was very prophetic in relation to ecotheology. Moltmann (b. 1926),
one of the most influential of contemporary German Protestant theologians,
developed ecotheology explicitly in his later period with full awareness of the
contemporary ecological crisis, particularly in God in Creation (1985). My
intention is not to make comparisons, but rather to use their insights in a
complementary way in order to articulate the above three key elements.
1. The inter-relatedness of humanity, nature, and God
1.1. Teilhard: matter and spirit
One of the main tasks for ecotheology is to articulate the basic
presupposition that God created the universe, and that humanity and the natural
world are deeply interconnected through God. Rejecting the dualistic or
Cross and E. A. Livingstone, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985), p. 1027.
8
Teilhard was forbidden to teach and debarred from publishing his theological and philosophical
works during his life time because of unorthodox ideas. But recently those interested in
establishing a new cosmology in ecotheology have turned to his writings, for instance, Thomas
Berry, Paul Santmire, Celia Deane-Drummond, and Denis Edwards; Moltmann has been professor
of systematic theology at the university of Tübingen since 1967. His theology is divided into two
periods, early and later. His early Period consists of the trilogy, Theology of Hope (1964), The
Crucified God (1972), and The Church in the power of the Spirit (1975), and the overarching
principle of his later work was the notion of God’s Trinitarian history with the world.
21
hierarchical understanding of matter and spirit, nature and humanity, both
Teilhard and Moltmann argue that God, humanity and the natural world are
interrelated
with
one
another.
Their
understanding
of
cosmology
is
characterised by the intrinsic value of the non-human world in terms of its
sacredness and its relationship with God and humanity, and their approaches
complement each other.
First of all, Teilhard rejects the traditional dualism between matter and
spirit, and instead argues that they are inter-related. According to him, ‘there
are no longer two compartments in the universe, the spiritual and the physical:
there are only two directions along one and the same road (the direction of
pernicious pluralization and that of beneficial unification).’ 9 That is, they are
two directions or two aspects of one and the same reality within the evolution
of the world. Matter and spirit differ in their directions, but inhabit the same
reality. In other words, they are not radically different entities.
This same reality can be explained by the dynamic of communion with God.
Teilhard not only expresses his love of matter, but also seeks ‘to reconcile it
with the unique adoration of the only absolute and definitive Godhead’.10 Matter
can be sacred only because of its relationship with God, and at the same time
the human can live in communion with God through the sacredness of matter.
Teilhard suggests that we can have a ‘Communion with God through Earth’.11
The earth is sacred because of its relationship with God, and human beings
have a communion with God through the earth. The implication is that matter is
9
Teilhard, ‘My Universe’, in Science and Christ (London: Collins, 1986), p. 51.
Ursula King, Spirit of Fire: the Life and Vision of Teilhard de Chardin (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books, 1996), p. 56.
11
Teilhard, ‘Cosmic Life’, in Writings in Time of War (London: Collins, 1968), pp. 13-71 (p. 57).
10
22
an essential element in the relationship between humanity and God. In this
respect, matter is interconnected with the human and God.
1.2. Teilhard: biosphere, noosphere, and Omega
Interestingly, Teilhard also provides a kind of scientific explanation for the
interrelatedness of humanity and the non-human natural world by developing an
evolutionary notion of cosmology. As matter and spirit are regarded as two
directions of the same reality, there is a sense of becoming, movement or
process, in his notion of cosmology. The whole universe, for him, is not static,
but is evolving towards a final point, ‘Omega’. Referring to the dynamics of
evolution, he approaches the universe with two key terms, ‘biosphere’ and
‘noosphere’. The Austrian scientist Eduard Suess first suggested the term
biosphere in 1875 in his book The Origin of the Alps, and Teilhard, who was
interested in the interrelationships within the living world, was an early
promoter of the concept of biosphere. The term ‘noosphere’ was coined and
promoted in the 1920s by Teilhard, Edouard Le Roy and Vladimir Vernadsky.
For his part, Teilhard is concerned with the interaction between the biosphere,
which is common to all creatures, and the noosphere, which is characteristic of
humanity.12
Teilhard theorizes that there are three major phases of evolution, the
geosphere (the physical formation of the planet), the biosphere and the
noosphere. The biosphere is the ‘terrestrial zone containing life’ or ‘the actual
12
See Ursula King, ‘One Planet, One Spirit: Searching for an Ecologically Balanced Spirituality’,
in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on People and Planet, ed. by Celia Deane-Drummond (London:
Equinox, 2006), pp. 74-95.
23
layer of vitalized substance enveloping the earth’.13 By contrast, the noosphere
is
human
consciousness
and
self-reflexivity
(cognitive
and
humanistic
processes). In The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard describes it as ‘a new layer,
the thinking layer, that, after having germinated at the close of the Tertiary,
since that time has been spreading out on top of the plant and animal world.
Over and beyond the biosphere there is a noosphere.’14 Like matter and spirit,
biosphere and noosphere are not two separate things but integrated in a
significant way. The noosphere, to some extent, is a natural extension of the
biosphere. Teilhard argues that ‘life and thought are bound to the contours and
fate of the terrestrial mass not just by accident, but by structure’. 15 The
noosphere is the ‘hominisation’ of the biosphere. As a result, neither man nor
Earth can be fully understood except in the light of the hominised Earth.
The interwoven and interdependent relationship between the biosphere and
noosphere implies that human consciousness is associated with matter and the
non-human natural world. This relationship can be regarded as ‘a form of
balance between the creative world of imagination and the physical domain of
our material existence’.16
At the same time, the noosphere is deeply involved
in the evolution of the biosphere. Although the evolution of animal life is
directional
and
preferential,
it
does
not
imply
any
purpose.
Human
consciousness, however, has brought an important change into this non-human
world in terms of purpose and plan. Teilhard maintains that ‘since the
13
Teilhard, The Future of Man (London: Collins, 1964), p. 157.
Teilhard, The Human Phenomenon, trans. by Sarah Appleton-Weber (Brighton: Susses
Academic Press, 1999), pp. 123-4.
15
Ibid., p. 195.
16
Paul R. Samson and David Pitt, ‘Introduction: Sketching the Noosphere’, in The Biosphere and
Noosphere Reader, ed. by Paul R. Samson and David Pitt (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 1-10 (p.
2).
14
24
appearance of man the living individual being becomes able to plan’ and
‘arranges matter actively through self-evolution’.17 The emergence of human
consciousness (the noosphere) thus transforms the face of the Earth with
regard to purpose and plan. Teilhard argues that this reflexive awareness is not
a mere variation of elements of the world, but a super-stage of consciousness.
Although the notions of biosphere and noosphere may be just conjectures,
they enabled Teilhard to articulate the inter-relatedness of the universe in a
scientific manner. He develops this understanding of the universe further
through theological reflection. He interprets the idea of the biosphere and the
noosphere theologically by associating it with God’s action in the universe. The
evolution of the universe, consisting of the biosphere and noosphere, leads to a
final point, ‘Omega’ (the Christ). Thus it is the Christ who makes the universe
interrelated, unified, and sacred, on the grounds that He is present in the
universe and holds all things together as a centre, Omega Point. Christ is the
final point towards which the evolutionary process moves. Teilhard holds that
‘Christ is the end point of evolution, even the natural evolution, of all beings;
and therefore evolution is holy.’18 This universal Christ is ‘the organic centre of
the entire universe’.19 Christ, as the centre, is also described as the heart or
soul of the world. As a result, all things in creation are connected with and
dependent upon Him and finally brought to Oneness or Unity in the universal
Christ. Teilhard describes this unity as a creative union in which the multiple
17
Teilhard, ‘The Antiquity and World Expansion of Human Culture’, in Man’s Role In Changing
The Face of The Earth vol. I, ed. by William L. Thomas, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1956), pp. 103-112 (p. 107).
18
Teilhard, Hymn of the Universe (London: Collins, 1965), p. 133.
19
Teilhard, ‘Note on the Universal Christ’, in Science and Christ (London: Collins, 1968), pp. 1420 (p. 14).
25
can become one, not through fusion of identity, but through unity in diversity. In
other words, ‘in creative union [. . .] everything happens as though the One
were formed by successive unifications of the multiple [. . .] creative union
does not fuse together the terms which it associates [. . .] It preserves the
terms--it even completes them, as we see in living bodies, where the cells are
the more specialized.’ 20 He calls this final form of union ‘Omega’ which is
‘identical with the revealed Christ’.21
Theology understand the materiality of nature in a metaphysical sense, but
ecotheology needs to see the natural world from a materialistic as well as
metaphysical perspective in order to understand the intrinsic value of nature.
Teilhard’s account of the biosphere and the noosphere is a useful resource for
ecotheology in the sense that this approach offers both perspectives. The
dynamic of the biosphere and the noosphere makes us recognise how the
human and the non-human natural world are deeply interconnected in terms of
a materialistic perspective, and at the same time, this inter-relatedness is
eventually associated with the immanence of God in terms of the theological
perspective of ‘Omega’ (the Christ).
Many theologians agree that Teilhard’s work is broadly ecological in scope,
and therefore very relevant for contemporary ecotheology as well as being
resonant with modern cultural and scientific attitudes to evolution.22 His thought,
however, has been criticised for its theological anthropocentrism in the sense
that the idea of the development from the biosphere to the noosphere implies an
20
21
22
Teilhard, ‘My Universe’, p. 45.
Ibid., p. 54.
Santmire, Nature Reborn, pp. 44-60; Deane-Drummond, Eco-Theology, pp. 37-39.
26
instrumental view of biophysical reality and human dominion over nature.
Moltmann also argues that Teilhard is negligent of the victims of evolution.23
He sees Teilhard’s notion of the process as anthropocentric, but a number of
ecotheologians try to show how his idea of the cosmic Christ provides a cosmic
and ecological vision that is not anthropocentric. 24 As Santmire put it, all
creatures, both human beings and non-human beings, are held together and will
be ‘consummated’ in the cosmic Christ, Omega Point. 25 Although human
consciousness, the noosphere, is the upper stage of the evolutionary process,
the final point of evolution will be completed in the cosmic Christ, who holds the
whole universe together. In the light of this vision of the cosmic Christ,
Teilhard’s thought is not anthropocentric, but rather cosmic. His concept of
cosmology thus offers a cosmic and ecological vision to ecotheology.
1.3. Moltmann: the relational dynamic of the Trinity
Having
examined how
Teilhard
attempts
to
articulate
the
organic
relationship of the universe in terms of some scientific discoveries (the
biosphere and noosphere) and spirituality, we now turn to Moltmann. Teilhard
articulates the immanence of God through the notion of the cosmic Christ, but
we need to show how the cosmic Christ is related with God who is the Absolute
Other. This necessity makes us draw on another resource in order to
comprehend how Absolute Otherness can be present in the universe. Like
Teilhard, Moltmann suggests the relational dynamic between God and the
23
Jűrgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ (London: SCM, 1990), p. 294.
Deane-Drummond claims that ‘his cosmic Christ acts as a counterweight to more
anthropocentric tendencies in his thinking’, Eco-Theology, p. 38.
25
Santmire, Nature Reborn, p. 56.
24
27
universe, but his way of understanding cosmology is dogmatic in terms of the
doctrine of the Trinity. In contrast with the anthropocentric and hierarchical
understanding of creation, he suggests a renewed theological understanding of
the relationship between God and humanity and nature by examining the
relational dynamic of the Trinity and the work of the spirit.
Moltmann associates the relationship between God and creation with the
notion of the Trinity as that relationship can be regarded as a Trinitarian
process. Rejecting the way of conceiving of God as absolute subject or supreme
substance, Moltmann expresses the doctrine of the Trinity through the
dynamics of relationship and fellowship. In the triune God, the Father, the Son
and the Spirit, each has its own role. The Father is ‘the creating origin of
creation’, who ‘sends the Son and the Spirit’; the Son is ‘its shaping origin (the
Word of creation)’, who ‘gathers the world under his liberating leadership and
redeems it’; the Spirit is the ‘life-giving origin (the creative Energy)’, who
‘gives life to the world and allows it to participate in God’s eternal life’. 26
Though each of them has its own role, they are united in terms of relations of
community and fellowship and therefore they are one God.
Moltmann’s favourite way of portraying the Trinity is the notion of
perichoresis which is a Greek term used for ‘the doctrine denoting the mutual
indwelling or interpretation of the three Persons of the Trinity whereby one is
as invariably in the other two as they are in the one’.27 That is, the unity of God
26
Moltmann, God in Creation: an ecological doctrine of creation (London: SCM, 1985), pp. 97-98.
H. E. W. Turner, ‘Coinherence’, in A New Dictionary of Christian Theology, ed. by Alan
Richardson and John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1983), p. 112 (p. 112). In Latin, it is called
circumincessio; E. G. Kaiser defines perichoresis as ‘The mutual indwelling of the divine and
human natures in Jesus Christ. Trinitarian perichoresis (circumincession) is the sacred indwelling
of the three Persons in one sole God’, ‘Perichoresis, Christological’, in New Catholic
27
28
can be described by the perichoresis of the divine Persons. He argues that ‘the
Trinitarian persons are not to be understood as three different individuals who
only subsequently enter into relationship with one another’, as in tritheism28;
nor are they ‘three modes of being or three repetitions of the One God’, as in
modalism29; rather ‘the doctrine of perichoresis links together in a brilliant way
the threeness and the unity, without reducing the threeness to unity, or the
dissolving the unity in the threeness.’30 In other words, the idea of perichoresis
can contain both the threeness and the oneness of God simultaneously without
reducing one to the other. There is ‘genuine unity in difference and authentic
difference in unity with this concept of perichoresis’.31 And the possibility of
unity in difference and difference in unity is recognised by the relational and
communal understanding of God. Through the relational and communal dynamic,
the Trinity is one in diversity and diversity in one.
1.4. Moltmann: the Trinitarian idea of God and creation
For Moltmann, the perichoretic unity of God can be applied to the
Encyclopedia, vol. 11, 2nd ed (Detroit: Thomson/Gale; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America, 2003), pp. 122-3 (p. 122); ‘By the term circumincession theology understands the
mutual immanence and penetration of the three divine PERSONS [. . .] In its present Trinitarian
meaning it was first used by St. John Damascene in the eighth century (De fide orth. 1.8;
Patrologia Graeca, 94:829),’ A. M. Bermejo, ‘Circumincession’, in New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol.
3, pp. 741-2 (p. 741).
28
‘Tritheists deny God’s unity and profess three essences or natures as well as three Persons in
God. Their error is due to failure to distinguish between nature and person, so that to admit three
Persons is to accept three divine natures,’ P. J. Hamell, ‘Trinity, Holy, Controversies on’, in New
Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 14, pp. 202-205 (p. 202).
29
‘Modalism is the strict form of MONARCHIANISM, a heresy that originated in an exaggerated
defense of the unity (monarchia) of God; and while verbally admitting a Trinity, it denied the real
distinction between the Persons. It affirmed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are modes,
aspects, or energies of one and the same divine Person, who is given different names according
as He exercises different functions ad extra or outside of the Trinity,’ P. J. Hamell, ‘Modalism’, in
New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 9, pp. 750-1 (p. 750).
30
Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom (London: SCM, 1981), p. 175.
31
Bouma-Prediger, The Greening of Theology, p. 125.
29
relationship between God and creation. He insists that the divine perichoresis is
the ‘archetype’ for the relationship between God and creation. That is, ‘all
relationships which are analogous to God reflect the primal, reciprocal
indwelling and mutual interpenetration of the Trinitarian perichoresis: God in
the world and the world in God; heaven and earth in the kingdom of God,
pervaded by his glory.’32 Since there is no one-sided relationship of domination
and superiority in the triune God, the relation between God and creation is also
characterized by mutuality and reciprocity. As the Trinity is a model for man’s
relationship to nature, the relationship between humanity and the non-human
world should be based on mutuality and reciprocity. As a result, the universe is
characterized not by the sense of domination, but by the dynamic of a mutual
relationship.
For instance, the relationship between body and soul is based on the mutual
relationship of the Trinity. In terms of the notion of the human, the traditional
dualistic view considers the human as being composed of body and soul, and the
latter was regarded as superior to the former. Moltmann, however, rejects that
view. For him, on the one hand, there is a difference between soul and body,
between ‘the conscious and the unconscious, the voluntary and the involuntary,
the centre and the periphery’. 33 On the other hand, the difference is not
hierarchical, but is characterized by the dynamics of perichoresis. Moltmann
has understood ‘human likeness to God in this same context of the divine
perichoresis [. . .] the imago Trinitatis’. 34 Accordingly, the differentiation of
32
33
34
Moltmann, God in Creation, p. 17.
Ibid., p. 259.
Ibid., pp. 258-9.
30
soul and body is as a perichoretic relationship of fellowship and mutual
interpenetration. At the same time, there is a unity of body and soul in the spirit.
‘Spirit is the human being’s comprehensive organizational principle’, but ‘the
human being’s spirit is not identical with the conscious subjectivity of his
reason and his will.’ Rather, it ‘comprehends the whole unified structure of his
body and his soul.’35
At the same time, the relationship between humanity and nature also
reflects the mutual relationship of the Trinity. With respect to the human’s
relationship to nature, Moltmann explores two aspects of the human: imago
mundi and imago Dei. First of all, Moltmann’s idea of imago mundi shows how
the human, as part of nature, is related to all other creatures. As the creation
narrative of the Genesis in chapter 2 affirms, the human being is part of nature
in the sense that Adam was formed from the soil and would return to it.36 The
modern metaphysics of subjectivity, however, refers to our alienation from
nature. Moltmann argues that ‘the human being does not confront nature: he
himself is nothing other than one of nature’s products’.37 Further, he, as the
product of nature, is seen as ‘imago mundi - as a microcosm in which all
35
Ibid., p. 18.
Genesis 2. 7, ‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground’ – formed a man (Heb
adam) of dust from the ground (Heb adamah). The Bible: Authorized King James Version, with an
Introduction and Notes by Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1997); One of the reasons I use the King James Bible in this thesis is that both Coleridge and
Wordsworth seem to have been influenced by it. Leland Ryken points out Coleridge’s use of the
King James Bible in his poetry by noting that ‘during the last decade of his life Coleridge had two
books next to his bed – Martin Luther’s Table Talk and the King James Version of the Bible. Two
copies of the KJV belonging to Coleridge have survived, one of them containing numerous notes
from Coleridge’. The Legacy of the King James Bible: Celebrating 400 Years of the Most
Influential English Translation (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), p. 201; Adam Potkay also argues that
Wordsworth’s poetry is resonant with the language of the King James Bible. ‘Romantic
transformation of the King James Bible: Wordsworth, Shelley, Blake’, in The King James Bible
After Four Hundred Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences, ed. by Hannibal Hamlin
and Norman W. Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 219-233.
37
36
31
previous creatures are to be found again, a being that can only exist in
community with all other created beings and which can only understand itself in
that community’.38 Thus the human being as part of nature is associated with
the fellowship of creation and, at the same time, as imago mundi he seems to be
the embodiment of all other creatures. For Moltmann, the idea of embodiment is
also described by the idea of evolution. Through evolution the human being
‘contains within itself all the simpler systems in the evolution of life, because it
is out of these that the human being has been built up and proceeded [. . .] As
microcosm the human being represents the macrocosm’. 39 Accordingly, the
relationship between humanity and nature is conceived not as one of dominance
and superiority, but as one of mutuality and reciprocity.
For Moltmann, this mutual relationship of humanity and nature reflects the
Trinitarian relationship and also is permeated by the Triune God. It is the work
of the spirit, like the Christ (Omega point) of Teilhard, that is the key element in
the interconnectedness between God and humanity and the non-human world.
The spirit is a unifying principle in creation. The Word is also involved in
creation along with the Spirit, but its role is different. Moltmann argues that ‘the
Creator differentiates his creatures through his creative Word and joins them
through his Spirit’. 40 If the Word is associated with creation in terms of
differentiation and distinction, the Spirit is associated with creation in terms of
harmony, co-operation and community. Thus, for Moltmann, the Spirit is the
‘holistic principle’ which creates ‘harmony’ and ‘mutual perichoreses’ and
38
39
40
Ibid., p. 190.
Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, p. 289.
32
hence ‘community’ among the individual existents of creation.41 The Word and
the Spirit do not oppose each other, but ‘they complement one another in the
unity of created things.’42
Moltmann’s relational understanding of the Trinity and its association with
creation has influenced ecotheology in a significant sense.
43
There is
widespread agreement in ecotheology that we need to attribute a proper role to
the Trinitarian Persons in the salvific missions of the Word and the Holy
Spirit. 44 And a number of theologians attempt to re-discover the Trinity in
relational terms, for example, John Zizioulas, Walter Kasper, Catherine LaCugna,
and Elizabeth Johnson.45 But Moltmann’s pioneering contribution to ecotheology
is that he expands the work of the Holy Spirit into the non-human world. He
successfully links the relational dynamic of the Trinity to the relational dynamic
of creation, through the Holy Spirit. As Deane-Drummond argues, ‘he has
succeeded where other theologians have failed in widening out the scope of
discussion on the Spirit to include creaturely existence that is other than
human.’46 Thus the appeal of Moltmann’s cosmology lies in his understanding of
the distinctive role of the Holy Spirit, who is immanent in the whole universe
and enables all creatures to exist and evolve in an interrelated world and who
41
43
See, Deane-Drummond, Ecology in Jűrgen Moltmann’s Theology (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen
Press, 1997); Bouma-Prediger, The Greening of Theology.
44
Denis Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God, p. 118. See also Karl Rahner, The Trinity (New
York: Herder and Herder, 1970), p. 27; see David Coffey, ‘A Proper Mission for the Holy Spirit’,
Theological Studies 47 (1986), 227-50.
45
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993), p.
17; Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ (London: SCM, 1983), pp. 290-310; Catherine Mowry
LaCugna, God for us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991),
pp. 250-310; Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is (New York: Crossroad, 1993), p. 22.
46
Deane-Drummond, Eco-theology, p. 132.
42
33
brings each of them into a communion with the Trinity.47
1.5. A reciprocal relationship over and against a hierarchical one
So far, we have shown that, for Teilhard and Moltmann, the non-human
natural world is not separated from human beings anymore, but is deeply
interrelated with them and with God. They provide a transformative notion of
cosmology in that they overcome the separation of humanity and nature, and
include the non-human natural world within the relationship between humanity
and God. Thus we can argue for the unity of the universe in a reciprocal sense.
The idea of interrelatedness, however, can be controversial in the light of
totality and hierarchy. A perspective stressing organic unity ignores difference
in the name of unity and so risks committing violence towards elements that do
not fit in or that somehow resist the unity. Further, organicism is susceptible to
criticism for ignoring a tension between hierarchy and reciprocity. In Romantic
Organicism, Charles I. Armstrong provides an investigation into the ways in
which the thought of German idealists had influenced the writings of British
Romanticists and a number of twentieth-century critics in the light of
organicism. Armstrong, however, points out that ‘as romantic organicism was
caught between the competing principles of reciprocity and hierarchical
organization, modern theories capsize on the aporia opened up between alterity
and equal relations of reciprocity’. 48 His intention in this book is neither to
attempt to debunk the idea of organicism, nor to attempt to recuperate it. Rather
47
Edwards, Breath of Life: A Theology of the Creator Spirit (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2004), p.
121
48
Charles I. Armstrong, Romantic Organicism: From Idealist Origins to Ambivalent Afterlife
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 185.
34
he tries to express his dream of an organicism in which ‘heterogeneity does not
exclude re-ciprocity’.49
Here two points should be made. First, we cannot avoid a hierarchical
aspect in understanding the universe. For example, in ecotheology we should
not deny a hierarchical relationship between humanity and nature and God. God
as the Creator of the universe is superior to it, and we do not claim a perfect
equity between humanity and nature either. Secondly, the question is then how
to maintain both hierarchy and reciprocity and to avoid privileging the one over
the other or the other way around. One of the key answers lies in the
relationship between God and the creation. Although God as the Creator is
absolutely superior to creation, this hierarchical status does not prevent God
from loving creation. What matters is God’s attitudes towards the universe.
Some have criticised the dualistic Western way of understanding the
relationship between matter and spirit or between human and nature, which
caused the problems of separation and hierarchy in a dominating sense. What
ecotheology is trying to do is to change such a point of view and to bring about
a new perspective on the universe. Armstrong defines organicism as ‘a
grounding systematics for understanding all holistic structures’ or to put
matters simply, ‘a way of thinking meaningfully about wholes’.50 In other words,
‘a way of thinking meaningfully about wholes’ is concerned with our attitude
towards the universe. In a pamphlet The New Story, Thomas Berry holds that
our modern crisis is caused by a lack of understanding of humanity’s place in
49
50
Armstrong, Romantic Organicism, p. 186.
Ibid., p. 2.
35
the universe.51 Thus, according to ecotheology, humans need to re-establish
their place in the universe by articulating the relationship between God,
humanity and non-human world. Although there is still a sense of hierarchy in
that relationship, it is associated not with domination, but with a reciprocal
sense, because the new cosmology offers us a perspective that enables us to
understand the inter-relatedness of the whole universe.
2. The presence of God in the universe: the sacredness of nature
2.1. Teilhard: the cosmic Christ and divine love
Teilhard and Moltmann develop further the intrinsic value of nature by
arguing that it is sacred through the immanence of God. The idea of God’s
immanence in the universe, however, creates a tension between theology and
ecotheology. Traditionally, theology has stressed the transcendence of God as
an Absolute Other, being beyond the human and creation. Ecotheology, however,
aims to articulate the immanence of God in the universe. When Teilhard and
Moltmann describe the immanence of God through the cosmic Christ and the
cosmic spirit respectively, two main issues arise: is the immanence of God
pantheistic?; how can the transcendent God be immanent simultaneously? In this
section, we will explore ways of thinking of God’s immanence as not pantheism
but panentheism.
Teilhard rediscovers the value of matter by associating it with sacredness.
In his writings, he often mentions his love for the world or the universe. For
instance, he affirms that ‘I know myself to be irremediably less a child of
51
Berry, ‘The New Story’, p. .
36
heaven than a son of earth’. 52 He even wrote a ‘Hymn to Matter’: [. . .] ‘I
acclaim you [matter] as the divine milieu, charged with creative power, as the
ocean stirred by the Spirit, as the clay molded and infused with life by the
incarnate Word’. 53 For him, ‘every fragment of force, every spark of life is
equally sacred.’54 Matter is thus regarded not as merely lifeless and inferior,
but as sacred. If traditionally it was separated from spirit, he rediscovers an
intrinsic value of matter in the light of its sacredness. In addition, the
sacredness of matter reveals God’s action in creation. When we regard all of
creation as sacred, we ‘must necessarily think of the Earth with the kind of
reverence that we would accord a lower case sacrament because by sacrament
is meant a sign pointing to God’s action in our lives’.55 That is, the sacredness
of nature implies God’s continuous creative action.
It is through the cosmic Christ and divine love, for Teilhard, that God is
immanent in the universe. First, the cosmic Christ as the centre or final point is
present in the universe. In The Divine Milieu (1927), Teilhard examines how the
Divine milieu refers to both a centre and an omnipresence. On the one hand, it,
as ‘a centre’, ‘assembles and harmonizes within itself qualities which appear to
us to be contradictory’. 56 On the other hand, God is present everywhere
‘precisely because he is at once so deep and yet so akin to an extensionless
point that God is infinitely near and dispersed everywhere’; ‘precisely because
52
Teilhard, The Heart of Matter (London: Collins, 1978), p. 121.
Ibid., p. 76.
54
Teilhard, ‘Cosmic Life’, p. 28.
55
James W. Skehan, ‘Exploring Teilhard’s “New Mysticism”: Building the Cosmos’, in Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin on People and Planet, ed. by Celia Deane-Drummond (London: Equinox,
2006), pp. 13-36 (p. 33).
56
Teilhard, Le milieu divin, p. 100.
53
37
he is the centre that he fills the whole sphere’.57 He explains how the divine is
present in the universe: ‘I could already see God as entering the sphere of
external experience in which we move. Animating the great natural currents of
life and matter, he penetrated into my own personal essence and into the
development and growth of all things. He was the soul of everything that
moves.’58 God’s presence thus makes the universe holy.
Secondly, the idea of love is also associated with the immanence of God.
According to Teilhard, the sense of omnipresence is similar to the idea
developed by St. Ignatius de Loyola in his meditation Ad Amorem, in which God
is described as permeating the whole creation through His divine love. 59
Teilhard wrote that ‘sometime I should gather all my ideas together in a
synthesis built around the foundation of everything: love’.60 That is, love is the
crucial mode of God’s presence in the universe. The cosmic Christ, as
discussed above, holds together all things, and it is the power of love in Him
that exerts the great unifying force in the universe. Thus ‘the risen Christ is
universally present, present to each creature and to all creation, through the
creative love that sustains and unifies creation, and that draws it to himself.’61
If the risen Jesus is creation’s future central point, he, at the same time, is
present everywhere through his creative love. As a result, the cosmic Christ
permeates all realities, all things, all experiences, all our joys and suffering
57
Ibid., pp. 101-102.
Teilhard, ‘The Universal Element’, in Writings in Time of War (London: Collins, 1968), pp.
289-302 (p. 295).
59
Michael Ivens, Understanding the Spiritual Exercises: text and commentary (Leominster:
Gracewing, 1998), p. 176.
60
Robert Faricy, ‘The Exploitation of Nature and Teilhard’s Ecotheology of Love’, in Pierre
2006), pp. 123-137 (p. 128).
61
Ibid., p. 130.
58
38
through the outpouring of divine love.
2.2. Moltmann: the cosmic Spirit
Like the cosmic Christ of Teilhard, it is through the cosmic spirit that God,
for Moltmann, is immanent in the universe. Moltmann provides four principles of
the cosmic Spirit which operates in nature: (a) the Spirit as ‘the principle of
creativity on all levels of matter and life’ in terms of ‘new possibilities for
material and living organism’; (b) as ‘the holistic principle’ or ‘the common Spirit
of creation’; (c) as ‘the principle of individuation’ or ‘differentiation of particular
working sketches of matter and life on their various levels’; (d) as the principle
of being ‘open’ towards ‘their common future’.62 The cosmic Spirit works not
only in humankind but in the non-human world, and therefore God is immanent
through the cosmic spirit on which the sacredness of nature is based.
For Moltmann, the Spirit is the vital energy for creation in the world. He
asserts that ‘we have to understand the Spirit as the creative energy of God and
the vital energy of everything that lives’.63 Further, it is more than an energy.
In terms of the doctrine of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are
one God, but each is also an independent subject. Thus ‘the Spirit acts as an
independent subject, and he does so not merely towards men and women; in the
glorification of the Son and the Father, he acts on the Son and the Father as
well.’64 Accordingly, God is present as a divine subject in creation through the
62
64
Moltmann, God in Creation, p. 97. See also The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, where he
mentions that ‘it is not always clear from the New Testament that the Holy Spirit is not merely a
divine energy, but a divine subject too. On the other hand, we read in the Gospel of John that
“God is spirit” (4. 24). Spirit is therefore also a description of the divine existence’, p. 168.
63
39
Spirit.
2.3. The possibility of the transcendence and immanence of God
The notion of God’s immanence in Teilhard and Moltmann may be
understood as pantheistic as they describe God as being immanent in the
universe and conceive the non-human world as sacred. Their notion of God’s
immanence, however, is not pantheistic because they also conceive God as the
Absolute Other, clearly distinct from creation. So long as there is a fundamental
distinction between God and creation, their notion of God’s immanence cannot
be pantheism, which stresses the immanence of God over and against the
distinction between God and creation.
The question is how to articulate the idea of God as transcendent and at the
same time immanent in creation. Moltmann tries to draw a distinction between
Creator and creation but at the same time to express an intimate relationship
between
them.
That is,
he attempts
to
express
the
immanence
and
transcendence through a relational dynamic in the light of a mutual dwelling,
zimzum, and creation as process (creatio continua). Though God created the
world by the energies of the Spirit and is present in it through the Spirit, the
creation, unlike the Son, is not divine. In other words, ‘the world is not begotten
by God, as is the Son.’ 65
Thus creation is not divine but is nonetheless
intimately related to God through the Spirit, which is ‘the immanent
transcendence in all things’ and as such ‘the ground and source’ of all that is
contingent.66 Moltmann distinguishes between God’s indwelling and the world’s
65
66
Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, p. 113.
Moltmann, Creating a Just Future: the politics of peace and the ethics of creation in a
40
indwelling. God the Spirit dwells in creation, and in this way ‘God and the world
are related to one another through the relationship of their mutual indwelling
and participation; God’s indwelling in the world is divine in kind; the world’s
indwelling in God is worldly in kind.’67 There is a mutual indwelling between
God and the world, but their indwellings are not the same.
Concerning this mutual indwelling, Moltmann provides a core notion of God:
zimzum, the kabbalistic doctrine of self-limitation. Moltmann suggests that ‘in
order to create something outside himself, the infinite God must have made
room for this finitude beforehand, ‘in himself.’ But does not creation as opera ad
extra then presuppose an inversion of God which releases that extra in the first
place?’68 The extra Deum implies ‘a self-limitation of the infinite, omnipresent
God, preceding his creation’.69 Thus there is a distinction or distance between
God and creation. The act of creation, however, also happens in God. Moltmann
argues that creation must be viewed as ‘God’s act in God and out of God’.70 In
other words, creation is different from God but simultaneously is in God.
The notion of creatio continua also shows that God is different from
creation but immanent in creation. Moltmann speaks of three types of creation:
creatio originalis, creatio continua, and creatio nova. He writes, ‘we can see
initial creation as the divine creation that is without any prior conditions: creatio
ex nihilo; while creation in history is the laborious creation of salvation out of
the overcoming of disaster. The eschatological creation of the kingdom of glory,
threatened world (London: SCM, 1989), p. 58.
67
68
Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, p. 109.
69
70
Ibid., p. 109.
Ibid., p. 109.
41
finally, proceeds from the vanquishing of sin and death, that is to say, the
annihilating Nothingness.’ 71 The concept of creatio originalis by affirming
creatio ex nihilo refers to the transcendence of God. That is, God is understood
as the Absolute Other in the initial creation in that it is not subject to any
preconditions or presuppositions. Thus there is a fundamental distinction
between God and creation. By contrast, creatio continua and creatio nova
describe a mutual relationship between God and creation. ‘The initial creation’,
according to Moltmann, ‘has to be understood as creatio mutabilis’, and
therefore creation is ‘not closed within itself’ but ‘open for history’. 72 The
creation is, to some extent, still in process. ‘Moltmann’, as Deane-Drummond
put it, ‘urges us to see creation as an open process, with an eschatological
thread between initial creation, salvation history, and the kingdom of glory.’73 In
the end, creation in process is associated with the future. Moltmann argues that
the goal of creation ‘is not a return to the paradisal primordial condition’ but
rather ‘the revelation of the glory of God’. 74 If creatio ex nihilo and creatio
originalis conceive God as a transcendental Absolute Being, creatio continua
and creatio nova describe how God is continuously engaged with creation and
therefore how He is immanent in it.
The idea of creation as process is also central for Teilhard. For him, God’s
creation is not a single act, but a process that is going on now in world history.
In his words, ‘the world is still being created.’75 The evolutionary process of
71
72
73
74
75
Ibid., p. 90.
Ibid., 207.
Deane-Drummond, Ecology in Jűrgen Moltmann’s Theology, pp. 55-6.
42
becoming in the universe is the continuation of God’s creation. Although
Teilhard mentions that ‘the true evolution of the world takes place in souls and
in their union’, we should not regard his idea of evolution as being separated
from matter.76 For him, matter and spirit are not separated from each other.
Matter is deeply interconnected with the spiritual aspect of evolution in the
sense that ‘through all nature I was immersed in God’. 77 Thus the spiritual
aspect of evolution does not exclude the physical domain of living systems. Just
as Moltmann understands that God is present in the ongoing process of creation,
Teilhard maintains that God is involved in the continuation of creation.
Accordingly, by discovering the immanence of God, Teilhard and Moltmann
develop the sacredness of the non-human world, but their idea of immanence is
not pantheistic, but panentheistic. After Philip Clayton evoked ‘the panentheistic
turn’ in the theology of the twentieth century, the term, panentheism, has
become popular.78 In addition, this panentheistic turn refers to a fundamental
shift in ontology, signaling the shift ‘from a substance ontology to a relational
ontology’. 79 This idea of panentheism, however, is challenged by traditional
theism which criticises panentheism for its inadequate distinction between God
and the world. For traditional forms of theism, one of the key issues is to
articulate the absolute otherness of God, and therefore the Creator should not
76
78
Philip Clayton, ‘The Panentheistic Turn in Christian Theology’, Dialog 38 (1999), 289-93. See
also John Macquarrie, Stubborn Theological Questions (London: SCM Press, 2003), ‘I believe that
in the past fifty years or so there has been a movement among Christian theologians to lay more
stress on the closeness and immanence of God, in various forms of panentheism’, p. x.
79
Michael W. Brierley, ‘Naming a Quiet Revolution: The Panentheistic Turn in Modern Theology’,
in In whom we live and move and have our being: Panentheistic reflections on God’s presence in
a scientific world , ed. by Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans,
2004), pp. 1-16 (p. 13).
77
43
be influenced by the creature at all. In panentheism, however, the notion of
immanence tends to diminish the absolute freedom of God. John Cooper argues
that ‘Divine freedom is an oxymoron in almost all panentheism’, and that
Moltmann’s notion of zimzum is an example of how transcendence and
immanence contradict each other in panentheism.80
Cooper’s criticism, however, is not fair, because God’s self-limitation is
different from an actual limitation. If God should be immanent in the universe
because of his limitation, that means a restricted freedom of God. But the idea
of zimzum implies that God exists as an absolute other but he empties Himself
for the love of the world. Even in this self-limitation, God is still conceived as
an absolute other. The notion of self-emptying in Philippians (2:5-8) shows
well how the transcendence and immanence of the divinity co-exist in Jesus
without diminishing each other. For Moltmann, ‘the trinitarian concept of
creation integrates the elements of truth in monotheism (transcendence) and
pantheism (immanence)’, and ‘in the panentheistic view, God, having created the
world, also dwells in it, and conversely the world which he has created exists in
him.’81 Accordingly, God remains absolutely transcendental even in immanence.
In Teilhard’s case, the concept of differentiation maintains a proper balance
between transcendence and immanence. Teilhard does not refer explicitly to
panentheism, but he often regards himself as a ‘Christian pantheist’, rejecting
other forms of pantheism and monism.82 His idea of pantheism is the pantheism
of differentiation, which is very panentheistic. He argues that ‘the reflective
80
John W. Cooper, Panentheism, the other God of the philosophers: from Plato to the present
(Nottingham: Apollos2007), p. 326.
81
82
Henri de Lubac, The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin (London: Collins, 1967), pp. 154-60.
44
centers of the world are really one with God’, and that ‘this state is not
obtained by identification (God becoming all), but by the differentiating and
communicating action of love (God all in all)’.83 Although God is immanent in the
world, the distinction between identification and differentiation implies that God
does not become the world, and vice versa. In this respect, God is regarded as
both transcendent and immanent.
One of the possibilities of the balance is, as discussed above, the relational
dynamic of God and the world. The relationship between God and creation is
not static, but dynamic, in that God’s creation has not finished yet, and He
continues to be involved in the process of creation. The way of God’s
immanence is His continuation of the activity of creation in the universe. When
the non-human world is conceived as sacred through the immanence of God,
the sacredness implies not the union of one substance between God and
creation in a static sense, but the union of a relational dynamic. In this relational
dynamic, God is involved in the process of creation and at the same time is
distinct from it. As a result, for Teilhard and Moltmann, transcendence and
immanence do not contradict each other, but they maintain a proper balance
between them.
3. Cosmic eschatology
3.1. The significance of eschatology in ecotheology and theology
83
Teilhard, The Human Phenomenon, p. 223. See also, ‘A Clarification: Reflections on Two
Converse Forms of Spirit’ in Activation of Energy (London: Collins, 1970): ‘in that magnificent
definition of the pantheism of differentiation is expressed [. . .] the very essence of Christ’s
message’, pp. 215-227 (pp. 223, 225); St. Paul claims that ‘God may be all in all’ (1 Corinthians,
15. 28).
45
In the previous sections, we have discussed how ecotheology argues for
the intrinsic value of nature by articulating the inter-relatedness between
humanity, nature, and God, and by discovering the sacredness of nature through
the immanence of God. Now we need to investigate the importance of nature in
terms of the issue of eschatology. Christian faith is concerned with the future
as well as the present. Both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, the
people are always given a promise for the future, for example, a better land, or
redemption. In Christianity time has a beginning and an ending, but the end is
not the annulment of the universe but a new beginning, for example, ‘a new
heaven and a new earth’. In conventional theology, the non-human world is
usually excluded from the narrative of a final redemption. If the non-human
world is not included in the picture of the final salvation, it may be reduced to
simply being thought of as existing for the wellbeing of human beings. At the
same time, it is not clear that the non-human world needs a final redemption. In
this respect, the intrinsic value of nature needs to be examined in the light of
eschatology.
We
will
investigate
three
points:
first,
the
definition
of
eschatology; secondly, the significance of a cosmic eschatology; and thirdly, the
transformation of the universe in eschatology.
It was in the twentieth century that eschatology emerged as a focal point of
theology. There are a number of theologians who have stressed the significance
of eschatology. Ernst Kasemann argues that the ‘Apocalyptic was the mother of
all Christian theology’, 84 and Karl Barth also complained that Protestant
84
Carl E. Braaten, ‘The Recovery of Apocalyptic Imagination’, in The Last Things: Biblical and
Theological Perspectives on Eschatology, ed. by Carl E. Braaten and Robert Jenson (Grand
Rapids, Mich.; Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2002), pp. 14-32 (p. 18).
46
theology had lulled us ‘to sleep by adding at the conclusion of Christian
Dogmatics a short and perfectly harmless chapter entitled – “Eschatology”’.85
Albert Schweitzer discovers that the essence of Jesus’ message is deeply
eschatological.86 More recently, Moltmann emphasises the place of eschatology
by developing the theology of hope and locating eschatology at the beginning of
theology rather than at the end, on the grounds that hope for the future is a
fundamental characteristic of faith.87 The implication is that eschatology is not
an option, but a fundamental element in faith. If we look at the Old Testament
and the New Testament, we realise that their key message is concerned with
hope for the future and the fulfillment of the promise. In the former the
promised land is a recurring motif, and Jesus proclaims the Kingdom of God in
the latter. The issue of eschatology cannot be detached from Christian faith. As
Jenson put it, faith and eschatological expectation are two aspects of one mode
of existence.88 The emergence of eschatology is thus of great significance.
It is not easy to define what eschatology is, given that the language about
eschatology in the Bible is very enigmatic. ‘Eschaton’ is the Greek word for
‘end’, and, in traditional Christian theology, eschatology is understood as the
study of the end times in light of four major last things: resurrection, judgment,
heaven and hell. 89 Both millenarianism and apocalypse refer to a kind of
85
David Fergusson, ‘Eschatology’, in Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. by Colin E.
Gunton (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997), pp. 226-224 (p. 234).
86
Braaten, The Recovery of Apocalyptic Imagination, p. 18.; Fergusson, ‘Eschatology’, p. 234.
87
Fergusson, ‘Eschatology’, p. 235; D. A. Lane, ‘Eschatology (In Theology)’, in New Catholic
Encyclopedia, Vol.5, pp. 342-352 (pp. 345-6); Ernst M. Conradie, An ecological Christian
anthropology: At home on earth? (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 20.
88
Robert W. Jenson, ‘The Great Transformation’, in The Last Things: Biblical and Theological
Perspectives on Eschatology, pp. 33-42 (p. 34).
89
Bill T. Arnold, ‘Old Testament Eschatology and the Rise of Apocalypticism’, in The Oxford
Handbook of Eschatology, ed. by Jerry L. Walls (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008), pp. 23-24 (p. 24);
Neal DeRoo, ‘Introduction’, in Phenomenology and Eschatology: Not yet in the Now, ed. by Neal
47
eschatology. Millenarianism, based upon a strictly literal interpretation of the
Book of Revelation 20:1-15, is the teaching that before the Last Judgment
Christ will return to the earth in order to establish a kingdom which will last for
1,000 years.90 The notion of apocalypse, which comes from the Greek word
apokalypsis, meaning unveiling, uncovering, or revelation, had begun to be
formulated around the period of the Exile (587-538 B.C.). 91 And apocalyptic
writing completely replaced the older prophetic style after the return of the
first Jewish exiles - the postexilic age.92 Particularly it is the Book of Daniel
that has the most complete form of apocalypse in the Old Testament. 93
Christianity inherited the apocalyptic tradition, and it appears that John took
much of his source material from the Book of Daniel in the Book of Revelation,
the last book of the New Testament and one of the finest examples of this
literary form.94 Although the language of eschatology is puzzling, the common
basic message of eschatology in the Old Testament and the New Testament is
that salvation will entail the judgment of this world and the resurrection of the
faithful to a blessed heavenly existence. Eschatology refers to the end times,
but, at the same time, is concerned with a new world.
DeRoo and John Panteleimon (Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 1-11 (p. 1).
90
R. Kuehner, ‘Millenarianism’, in New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol.9, pp. 633-35 (p. 633).
During this period, Satan is chained for 1,000 years, the martyrs and all who have been faithful to
Jesus will come to life (the first resurrection) and for 1,000 years share His royal priesthood in a
messianic kingdom. As the 1,000 years near their end, Satan will be permitted to resume his
activity. After a bitter struggle Satan will be conquered definitively by Christ in the Last Judgment.
91
Elizabeth K. Rosen, Apocalyptic transformation: apocalypse and the postmodern imagination
(Lanham, Md.; Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2008), p. xiii; Braaten, ‘The Recovery of Apocalyptic
Imagination’, p. 15; John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish
Apocalyptic Literature (Grand Rapids, Mich.; Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), p. 5.
92
C. Stuhlmueller, ‘Apocalyptic’, in New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol.1, pp. 545-547 (p. 546).
93
This book was written during the great persecution of 167 to 164 B.C., when Antiochus IV
Epiphanes, the Seleucid king of Antioch, attempted to suppress Jewish national identity in
Palestine, see Stuhlmueller, ‘Apocalyptic’, p. 546.
94
Rosen, Apocalyptic transformation, p. xiii; Stuhlmueller, ‘Apocalyptic’, p. 546.
48
My main concern here is to show how eschatology is associated with
ecotheology. That is, the view to be defended is the following: along with
mainstream thinkers in ecotheology, it can be argued that cosmic eschatology is
an indispensable element of a constructive theology emphasising earthly
renewal and responsibility. Eschatology deals with the salvation of the human,
and some traditional theologians are skeptical of whether the non-human
natural world will be included in the final judgment and redemption. Denis
Edwards conceives eschatology as God transforming the universe as a whole,
but he raises a crucial question: will every sparrow that falls be redeemed?95
As Phan argues, the perspective of traditional eschatology was heavily
anthropocentric in that it viewed the redeemed cosmos mainly as the new
habitat for glorified humanity.96 A number of theologians, however, have tried
to articulate the relationship between eschatology and cosmology in different
terms. McFague claims that the good news is not only for individual human
beings [. . .] but for the entire creation.97 Phan also holds that the resurrection
is not only an event happening to the individual but also an ecclesial and cosmic
event. 98 For Karl Rahner, the presuppositions for eschatological statements
involve not only man as spiritual person but also man as a reality to whom there
95
Quoted by Robert Russell, ‘Cosmology and Eschatology’, in The Oxford Handbook of
Eschatology, ed. by Jerry L. Walls (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008), pp. 565-575 (p. 571).
96
Peter C. Phan, ‘Contemporary contexts and issues in Eschatology’, Theological Studies 55
(1994), 507-536 (pp. 534-5).
97
Sallie McFague, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993),
p. 201.
98
Phan, ‘Contemporary contexts and issues in Eschatology’, p. 8; see also, Russell, ‘Cosmology
and Eschatology’: in the Catholic doctrine of bodily resurrection such that ‘the whole physical
universe [. . .] shares in our destiny’, p. 570; Lane, ‘Eschatology (In Theology)’: ‘it is impossible
to talk about eschatology today without some reference to the contemporary fascination with
cosmology’, p. 346; Denis Edwards, Jesus and the Cosmos (New York: Paulist Press, 1991):
‘God’s power to save embraces not just humanity, but all of creation’, p. 85; ‘[. . .] the material
world will still be the expression of human spirit, and will participate in the final glorified state of
this spirit’, p. 94.
49
necessarily belongs a world as the milieu and environment in which he
actualizes his existence. 99 The world and environment where human beings
exist cannot be excluded from the vision of eschatology, but rather share in the
final destiny of humanity. Rahner rightly writes that ‘Christian anthropology
would be incomplete and even false if it wanted to understand the individual’s
final state merely as the salvation of an abstract human soul, and if it wanted to
ascribe immortality only to this soul and to make its destiny independent of the
transformation of the world’.100
3.2. Cosmic eschatology in Teilhard and Moltmann
In a similar vein, Moltmann explains some crucial reasons for the
inseparable
relationship
between
the
human
and
the
universe
in
an
eschatological vision. First, he points out that eschatology, without cosmology,
would become a gnostic myth of redemption concerned only with redemption
from, and not of, the body and the world. 101 Secondly, according to his
theological anthropology, ‘there is no such thing as a soul separate from the
body, and no humanity detached from nature [. . .] no redemption for human
beings either without the redemption of nature [. . .] no eternal life for human
beings without the change in the cosmic conditions of life.’ 102 Further, the
Creator is the redeemer in his doctrine of the Trinity. If God does not redeem
all that He creates, He would contradict Godself.103 Both humanity and the non-
99
Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: an introduction to the idea of Christianity (New
York: Crossroad, 1997), p. 444.
100
Ibid., p. 434.
101
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 260.
102
Ibid., p. 260.
103
Russell, ‘Cosmology and Eschatology’, p. 571.
50
human world are part of creation, and therefore both of them should be included
in the final redemption. In the long run, Moltmann, like Rahner, refers to the
significance of a cosmic eschatology.
Having referred to the importance of a cosmic eschatology, it seems
possible to argue that the non-human world must be included in the vision of
the promise and hope for the future. We still have, however, difficulty in
understanding a clear picture of ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ simply because
it is beyond our limited human comprehension and imagination.104 Nevertheless,
eschatology plays a crucial role in history. Most of all, the meaning of
eschatological narratives should not be accepted literally, but needs to be
interpreted, on the grounds that ‘eschatology is not some idle speculation about
the future, nor is it some kind of report of what goes on in the next world’.105
Eschatological narratives offer not the literal facts, but a kind of paradigm
through which people may try to understand the current situation and search for
hope. For instance, eschatological narratives were often created during times of
difficulties, and the symbols and images of apocalyptic revelation have provided
words of exhortation and consolation that meet the problems of the day,
offering encouragement in the face of persecution, support in the wake of
historical disaster, and courage in times of helplessness. 106 A number of
104
Rahner mentions that ‘we do not know what a transformed creation will be like. God and God’s
future are beyond our limited human comprehension and imagination’, Denis Edwards, Ecology at
the heart of Faith (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis; Edinburgh: Alban distributor, 2006), p. 89; DeaneDrummond also suggests that ‘the new earth is a transformed earth [. . .] but how far and to what
extent the same conditions prevail as in our present experience is quite simply outside the
boundary of human knowing’, Eco-theology, p. 173.
105
Lane, ‘Eschatology (In Theology)’, p. 347.
106
Braaten, ‘The Recovery of Apocalyptic Imagination’, pp. 27-8.
Sanders also ‘views the social function of the genre as literature of the oppressed’, Collins,
The Apocalyptic Imagination, p. 9; ‘Apocalypse is a means by which to understand the world and
one’s place in it. It is an organizing principle imposed on an overwhelming, seemingly disordered
51
theologians argue that the eschatological imagination, whatever its intended
meaning is, is a tool or a pattern of thought, which helps people deal with
present problems and shape a vision for the future.107 The symbols and imagery
of apocalyptic imagination are enigmatic, but they, as a paradigm, still enable
people to be aware of where they are and where they are heading.
If we look at the cosmic eschatology of Moltmann and Teilhard, we realise
that their understanding of cosmic eschatology becomes a paradigm for
analysing the present and suggesting a vision for the future. First, their
eschatological vision is not the dichotomy between, but the integration of, the
present and the future. We have already seen how both Moltmann and Teilhard
develop the organic relationship of the whole universe with the concept of
evolution. Teilhard theorizes that there are three major phases of evolution, the
geosphere, the biosphere and the noosphere, and Moltmann speaks of three
types of creation, creatio originalis, creatio continua, and creatio nova. Creation
proceeds towards its final destiny, and the present is already part of the final
point in the light of the notion of evolution. The present and the future are
deeply inter-related in evolution. As a result, the eschatological imagination, as
a tool, a pattern of thought, does not attempt to destroy the old order, but to
transform it. Though eschatology is concerned with the future, it is not the
universe’, Rosen, Apocalyptic transformation, p. xi; ‘The images that are used to describe the
eschatological age are at best indicators. They point towards a new quality of existence, but
because it is qualitatively different from the present we lack the vocabulary and thus the
knowledge to describe it [. . .] the images that are employed provide a direction both for our
hopes and for our energies here and now’, Fergusson, ‘Eschatology’, pp. 13-4.
107
See, Arland J. Hultgren, ‘Eschatology in the New Testament: The Current Debate’, in The Last
Things: Biblical and Theological Perspectives on Eschatology, pp. 67-89 (p. 68); Braaten, ‘The
Recovery of Apocalyptic Imagination’, p. 16; Anne Primavesi, From Apocalypse to Genesis:
Ecology, Feminism and Christianity (Tunbridge Wells: Burns and Oates, 1991), p. 67; Rosen,
Apocalyptic transformation, p. xi; Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination, p. 1.
52
denial of the present. Jesus teaches that the Kingdom of Heaven has already
come in the New Testament.108 Moltmann, in particular, developed the famous
notion of the kingdom, ‘the kingdom is already – but not yet here,’ in his
theology of hope. For him, ‘this earth is the real and sensorily experienceable
promise of the new earth.’109 Eschatology thus should not be understood as ‘pie
in the sky when you die’, but is already embedded in the here and now.110 An
eschatological vision is never fully realised under the conditions of history, and
therefore the world is directed to a point which is not the end of its existence,
but the end of its unfinished and continually developing history. 111 In this
respect, the present is already part of an eschatological vision. ‘A new heaven
and a new earth’ is not the denial, but the transformation, of the present world.
For Teilhard, the transformation of the universe in eschatology is
essentially based upon the risen Christ. The evolution of the universe
eventually leads to a final point, ‘Omega’, in which ‘all the fibers, the threads,
the generating lines, of the universe are knit together’.112 Teilhard conceives
the risen Christ as the Omega of evolution, the goal and fulfilment of the whole
process. He argues that the risen Christ is present to the whole universe
through the incarnation and the resurrection, and therefore God’s universal
presence
‘has
transformed
itself
for
108
us
into
the
omnipresence
of
‘The kingdom of God is at hand’ (Mark 1. 15); ‘the kingdom of heaven is at hand’ (Matthew 4.
17); ‘the kingdom of God is within you’ (Luke 17. 21).
109
110
Fergusson, ‘Eschatology’, pp. 1-2.
111
Douglas J. Hall, ‘Stewardship as Key to a Theology of Nature’, in Environmental Stewardship:
Critical Perspectives – Past and Present, ed. by R. J. Berry (London: T and T Clark, 2006), pp.
129-144 (p. 143); Edwards, Jesus and the Cosmos, p. 93; Arnold refers to eschatology [. . .]
‘which is still in prospect and which presses for realization’. It is a culmination of history, rather
than an annulment of it, ‘Old Testament Eschatology’, p. 25.
112
53
christification’.113 Finally, Christ the Omega draws the universe to its future in
God and already empowers the whole process of evolutionary emergence from
within because Omega already exists and is at work in the deepest part of the
thinking mass.114 In other words, the risen Christ radiates the energy that leads
the universe to its transformation in God.
Moltmann, like Teilhard, understands the risen Christ as the key to a
cosmic eschatology. The resurrection of Jesus has become the universal law,
not only for human beings, but also for all cosmic life systems, and therefore
the raised body of Christ acts as an embodied promise for the whole creation.115
And the risen Christ draws all things into his future.116 The whole creation will
be perfected or transformed through the risen Christ, and they will become new
and participate in the glory of God. As a result, the temporal creation, as the
consummation of creation, will become an eternal creation because all created
beings will participate in God’s eternity.117 Both Teilhard and Moltmann show
the possibility of the transformation of the universe through the risen Christ.
But this notion of transformation is not the denial of, but the consummation of,
the present.
We have examined the definition of eschatology, the relevance and
significance of a cosmic eschatology, and the transformation of the universe in
eschatology as a paradigm. Although the concrete picture of the final
redemption is beyond our limited human comprehension and imagination, it has
113
114
115
116
117
Teilhard, Le milieu divin, p. 112.
Teilhard, The Human Phenomenon, pp. 209-15.
Ibid. p. 294.
54
been argued that an eschatological imagination as a tool or pattern of thought
plays a crucial role in analysing the present and shaping a vision for the future.
Both Moltmann and Teilhard express a cosmic eschatology that the whole
creation
will
be
transformed
through
the
risen
Christ.
Their
cosmic
eschatological vision is a paradigm for analysing the present and suggesting a
vision for the future in two important ways. First, their notion of a cosmic
eschatology is critical of contemporary society, particularly in its insistence on
seeing the non-human world included in the final redemption. And secondly, it
provides a vision for the future that creation will be transformed through the
risen Christ at the final judgment. In this respect, it is claimed that their cosmic
eschatological imagination consolidates the intrinsic value of the non-human
world in terms of its transformation in the final redemption.
Describing and analysing mainly the works of Teilhard and Moltmann, an
attempt has been made to articulate the intrinsic value of the non-human world
by developing three key elements: the inter-relatedness of the universe, the
presence of God in the universe, and eschatology for the universe. This
perspective of ecotheology enables us to re-discover and to re-establish our
relationship with the universe on the grounds that we are inter-related with
nature and God in a reciprocal way; nature needs to be conceived as sacred
owing to the presence of God; the non-human world is also included in the final
vision of eschatology. Ecotheology as a conceptual framework thus provides us
with a transformative understanding of the non-human natural world. Now it is
time to explore Coleridge and Wordsworth in the light of three key terms of
ecotheology, and show that their works relate to recent developments in
55
ecotheological theory.
56
Chapter 2
Coleridge’s quest for the unity of the universe
In this Chapter, it will be argued that the works of Coleridge reflect two
ecotheological
elements,
the
interrelatedness
of
the
universe
and the
independent sacred value of the non-human natural world. Throughout his
career as a poet and thinker Coleridge makes a constant and determined effort
to discover how we can conceive the universe as a unity rather than as a
collection of different parts. Two ideas are key to his lifelong search for unity.
In his early years, he was enthusiastic about the idea of the one life, and later
he turned to Naturphilosophie. Intriguingly, each idea provides its own
conceptual frame which enables the poet to articulate the universe as a whole.
Thus it will be shown how both of them offer an ecotheological perspective in
their way of unifying the universe.
One of the difficulties in examining Coleridge is the uncertainty that
surrounds ideas of his early and late periods. With respect to the works of
Coleridge, the critics often draw a line between an early period and a later
period for various reasons. M. H. Abrams describes Coleridge as a bard in the
years 1796-1798 and as metaphysician and critic in the years 1815-1819, the
distinction depending on the genres of his works.1 In The Life of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, R. Ashton also maps out the critical biography of Coleridge by
1
M. H. Abrams, The Correspondent Breeze: Essays on English Romanticism (New York: Norton,
1984), p. 206.
57
splitting his life into two parts, part one 1772-1803 and part two 1803-1834.2
B. Brice and W. Christie attempt to show how Coleridge’s philosophical and
theological ideas had changed from his early period to his later years in their
Coleridge and Scepticism and Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Literary Life.3 In his
early years, Coleridge was a Unitarian and radical in politics, and studied
Hartley’s philosophy (associationism and necessitarianism). However, he
rejected necessitarianism and turned to Anglican orthodoxy later. Though
Coleridge changed his views on philosophy and theology, a question remains
about how his later period relates to his early years. Favouring either continuity
or discontinuity, the critics are split on this question.4 For instance, according
to those who chose continuity, Coleridge never left the Church of England.
Ronald Wendling argues that Coleridge’s Unitarianism has sympathy for
Anglicanism and ‘all of this seems to indicate an emotional withholding of
himself from a Christian orthodoxy that he fundamentally accepted even as a
young man— the withholding masking itself as intellectual scruple.’ 5 Peter
Mann, however, points to a fundamental reorientation of his theological views in
a sense that, for example, ‘by 1798 C[oleridge] had moved toward the
traditional Christian view of evil as personal, innate, absolute, and prior to all
conditions and circumstances’.6
Both continuity and discontinuity have their own justifications, but here,
2
R. Ashton, The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
Ben Brice, Coleridge and Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007); William Christie, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge: A Literary Life (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
4
William Ulmer deals with this division in ‘Virtue of Necessity: Coleridge’s Unitarian Moral
theology’, Modern Philology, 102 (2005), 372-404.
5
R. Wendling, Coleridge’s Progress to Christianity: experience and authority in religious faith
(London: Bucknell UP, 1995), p. 109.
6
Lectures 1795 On Politics and Religion, ed. by Lewis Patton and Peter Mann (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1971; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 107, n.1.
3
58
neither agreeing nor disagreeing with any of them, I would like to focus on the
continuity between two periods from another perspective, Coleridge’s on-going
project on the unity of the universe. As mentioned above, one of his life-long
ends was to search for the unity of the universe, which was the main driving
force for his intellectual quest in both his early and later years.7 The doctrine
of the one life is often regarded as ‘part of the parochial lumber that he shook
off once he encountered Kant,’ but, as Seamus Perry argues, the idea is
‘centrally important for much of his intellectual life and even a key to the
Coleridgean predicament.’8 Although his interest in Unitarianism and Hartley’s
associationism shifts to orthodox Christianity and natural philosophy later, his
primary concern for the one life permeates through both periods. Accordingly,
attention needs to be paid to the continuity between the two periods in terms of
the unity of the universe, rather than to the division between them.
1. The inter-relatedness of the universe
1.1. The monistic idea of God: Priestley and Spinoza
In his early works, Coleridge develops the idea of the one life in his quest
for the unity of the universe. Most of all, it is important to underline the
7
Cutsinger writes, Coleridge ‘attached throughout his thinking to the question of unity [. . .]
Coleridge was concerned to pierce through custom and habit, what he called “the film of
familiarity and selfish solicitude” (footnote 5) in order to see a unity and wholeness of things
more inward than surfaces and deeper, hence, than the mutual exclusions of materialism and
mechanism and of material and mechanical things: a unity that would preserve also, however, the
fullness and abundance of the nature he loved [. . .] Coleridge’s method is a method attempting
always to disclose a unity, though not identity, among the seeming irreducibles of a dividing
vision: a unity of the one and the many, sameness and difference, subject and object, self and
other, activity and passivity’, ‘Coleridgean Polarity and Theological Vision’, The Harvard
Theological Review, 76 (1983), 91-108 (pp. 92-93). See also, John Beer, Coleridge the Visionary
(London: Chatto and Windus, 1959), p. 151.
8
Seamus Perry, Coleridge and the Uses of Division (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), pp. 68-9.
59
religious aspect of the idea in that ‘each Thing has a Life of it’s own, & yet they
are all “One Life”’, and this ‘One Life’ is based on God: ‘In God they move &
live, & have their Being.’9 There are some critics who announce religion as a
central idea in Coleridge’s thought. Perry regards Coleridge’s philosophy of
mind and poetry as being intricately involved with his religion. 10 Hedley also
holds that ‘the intellectual parameters of Coleridge’s thought are more
theological than is sometimes assumed’. 11 Further, Cutsinger points out how
critics often fail to recognise the centrality of God in his idea of oneness.12 It
can be argued that, for Coleridge, religion as a unifying principle plays a central
role in formulating the idea of the one life. In other words, Coleridge tries to
formulate the inter-relatedness of the universe through his religious faith in a
sense that the oneness of the universe is based upon the notion of God whose
presence permeates the whole universe. And it is Unitarianism that influenced
Coleridge’s idea of God.
13
Concerning Unitarianism, we should explore
Priestley and Spinoza because there is no doubt that they contributed
significantly to the development of Coleridge’s religious thoughts.
Joseph Priestley, the founder of Unitarianism, influenced Coleridge’s idea of
9
10
CL II, p. 866.
Perry, Coleridge and the Uses of Division, p. 61-2.
11
Hedley writes that ‘the actual Enlightenment backdrop was dominated as much by Christian
theologians such as Priestley and Paley as by the cultured despisers of religion – Hume and
Gibbon’, and that ‘this distinctively Christian context of the debate about Platonism is a vital clue
to Coleridge’s thought’, Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion, pp. 6-7.
12
Cutsinger, ‘Coleridgean Polarity and Theological Vision’, p. 93; see also, John Muirhead,
Coleridge as Philosopher (New York: Humanities, 1930): ‘Coleridge’s whole philosophy was a
Philosophy of Religion’, p. 217; J. R. Barth, The Symbolic Imagination: Coleridge and the Romantic
Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University, 1977): ‘all knowledge is ultimately one, whether it be
scientific, poetic, philosophical, or religious, and the capstone of all knowledge for him is
knowledge of God’, p. 11.
13
Perry points out that ‘the doctrine of the universal One Life originates in Coleridge’s
Unitarianism, encountered at Jesus College through the don Frend’, Coleridge and the Uses of
Division, p. 70. Gillman attributes Coleridge’s conversion to the influence of Frend, Life of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (London: William Pickering, 1838), p. 65.
60
God to the extent that his idea of God was a kind of precursor to Coleridge’s
notion of the oneness of the universe. In his early years Coleridge was
converted to Unitarianism. Writing to Southey in 1794, Coleridge declared
himself ‘a Unitarian Christian’.14 A 1798 letter to John Prior Estlin, a Unitarian
minister, also shows the strength of his belief in a Unitarian religion: ‘to the
cause of Religion I solemnly devote my best faculties – and if I wish to acquire
[. . .] to defend Religion ably, and by my reputation to draw attention to the
deference of it.’15 Priestley endeavours to articulate the oneness of God and the
creation. Challenging the dualism of matter and spirit, Priestley discusses the
continuity between them. First of all, in his Disquisitions relating to Matter and
Spirit, Priestley claims that we should not ‘consider matter with that contempt
and disgust, with which it has generally been treated’ but matter should ‘rise in
our esteem’. Matter has ‘no properties but those of attraction and repulsion’,
and at the same time it is not ‘impenetrable and inert substance’.16 For him,
matter is a kind of energy or force, and ‘the whole universe is spiritual force.’17
Priestley identifies God with this kind of energy: ‘God, as a spirit was superior
to, but not different in kind from matter, that is to say energy.’ 18 God and
matter share one common element, energy. ‘If then our ideas concerning matter
14
CL I, p. 148.
CL I, p. 373. The motivation of this vow may be found partly in Coleridge’s acceptance of a
£150 annuity from the Wedgewood family; see CL I, p. 384, a letter sent to John Thelwall; see
also Ashton, The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, pp. 118-119.
16
J. Priestley, Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit. To which is added the history of
philosophical doctrine concerning the origin of the soul [. . .] , 2nd edn (Birmingham: Pearson and
15
Rollason,
MDCCLXXII
[1782])
http://find.galegroup.com/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=oxfor
d&tabID=T001&docId=CW3318625236&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0
&docLevel=FASCIMILE [accessed 23 March 2011], pp. 22, 24.
17
H. w. Piper, The Active Universe: Pantheism and the Concept of Imagination in the English
Romantic Poets (London: The Athlone Press, University of London, 1962), p. 27.
18
Priestley, Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit, p. 173.
61
do not go beyond the powers of which it is possessed, much less can out ideas
go beyond powers, properties or attributes with respect to the Divine Being.’19
But we should note that God is the very source of this power: ‘The Divine Being
and his energy are absolutely necessary to that of every other being. His power
is the very life and soul of everything that exists; and strictly speaking, without
him we are, as well as can do nothing.’20 Thus matter, as an extension of the
Divine Being, ‘resolved into nothing but the divine agency exerted according to
certain rules’.21
Priestley shows the oneness of God and creation through the dynamic of
energy. By conceiving God and all nature as the same energy, Priestley seems
to describe God as pantheistic. He, however, seemed to be aware of the danger
of Spinozistic pantheism and tried to affirm the transcendence of God: ‘Nor,
indeed, is making the Deity to be, as well as to do every thing, in this sense,
any thing like the opinion of Spinoza; because I suppose a source of infinite
power, and superior intelligence, from which all inferior beings are derived; that
every inferior intelligent being has a consciousness distinct from that of the
Supreme Intelligence.’22 Being aware of the danger of Spinoza’s idea of God,
Priestley tries to make a distinction between Spinoza’s notion and his by
stressing the transcendence of God. In fact, it is questionable whether this
dualism of God and the creation can be consistent with the oneness of God and
the creation in terms of the dynamic of energy, but the main focus here is that
Priestley’s idea of the oneness of God and the creation influenced Coleridge’s
19
20
21
22
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
p.
p.
p.
p.
140.
42.
39.
42.
62
notion of the one life.
Probably one of Coleridge’s earliest references to Spinoza appears in a
letter to Southey in 1799: ‘however, sunk in Spinoza, remain as undisturbed as a
Toad in a Rock.’ A year later he also wrote to Humphry Davy that ‘as soon as I
settle, I shall read Spinoza & Leibnitz – and I particularly wish to know wherein
they agree with, & wherein differ from’. In Spinoza’s The Ethics, one of the
primary and most controversial notions is substance.23 At the beginning of the
book, he argues that ‘by substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is
conceived through itself’. 24 If Descartes understood mind and matter as
different kinds of substance, Spinoza conceived them as different ‘attributes’ of
one substance. In other words, for Spinoza, there is only one substance which is
infinite,
eternal,
all-inclusive,
all-embracing
reality,
self-sufficient,
and
necessary. And he identifies this one substance with God: ‘God is one, that is,
only one substance can be granted in the universe.’25 Nothing can exist or be
conceived without God, and therefore God is ‘the indwelling and not the
transient cause of all things’. Everything is ‘in God’ and there is no any
substance but God. There is ‘nothing in itself external to God’.26
Further, in order to exist each thing needs to be conditioned by another
particular thing, and ‘the force whereby each particular thing perseveres in
existing follows from the eternal necessity of God’s nature.’27 God is the force
23
The Ethics, in Benedict De Spinoza: On the Improvement of the understanding, The Ethics,
Correspondence, trans. by R. H. M. Elwes (New York: Dover Publications, INC., 1965), pp. 43271. The Ethics consists of five parts: Part I deals with God, Part II with mind and body, P art III
with the emotions, Part IV with ethics, and Part V with the power of reason over the emotions.
24
Spinoza, The Ethics, p. 45 (I. Defintions).
25
Ibid., p. 55 (I. xiv).
26
Ibid., p. 62 (I. xviii).
27
Ibid., p. 118 (II. xlv).
63
through which all things maintain their existence. Individual things as ‘the
modifications of the attributes of God’ are the very expressions of the attributes
of God. Spinoza affirms that ‘the more we understand particular things, the
more we understand God’. 28 For Spinoza nature or the universe is identified
with God. All is one and in God, and all is God. His idea of God brings about the
oneness and interconnectedness of the universe, but this idea, based on the
unreflective substance monism, causes some crucial problems, pantheism,
atheism, determinism, or Godless materialism. 29 Whereas traditional theism
tries to hold together both transcendence and immanence in spite of the
Incarnation, Spinoza sacrifices ‘God’s personality for the sake of his infinity’ but
see ‘God and the world as one’ in a pantheistic sense.30
Coleridge repeatedly portrays God as being present in the whole universe.
In Religious Musings, God is ‘all in all!’ (ll. 43-44), and in ‘Frost At Midnight’,
He is ‘Himself in all, and all things in himself’ (ll. 62). The way in which God is
‘Himself in all, and all things in himself’ will be discovered by the dynamic
relationship between the universe and God. In ‘The Eolian Harp’,31 Coleridge
depicts that:
And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
28
Ibid., p. 260 (V. xxiv).
See, Hedley, Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion, pp. 19, 92; ‘Coleridge as a Theologian’, in
The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. by Frederick Burwick (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009), pp. 473-497 (pp. 479-481); Brice, Coleridge and Scepticism, p. 71.
30
Hedley, Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion, p. 70.
31
The various revisions, see William Scheuerle, ‘A Reexamination of Coleridge’s “The Eolian
Harp”’, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 15 (1975), 591-599 (p. 3).
29
64
At once the Soul of each, and God of All? (ll. 44-48)
Although the poem seems to be a love poem to Sara in a local landscape, the
poet ‘deftly picks up elements of his larger vision’ in developing a natural
symbolism. 32 At first the harp is likened to a ‘coy maid half yielding to her
lover’ (ll. 15), but it becomes a contemplative instrument through which finite
individuals are related to the infinite in this passage, which clearly shows the
poem’s theme that God is present in everything in the sense that one
intellectual breeze, activating the animated nature as organic harps, is the Soul
of each and God of All. 33 If we look at the second draft of the poem, the
meaning of ‘the Soul of each, and God of all’ will be clearer:
Thus God would be the universal Soul,
Mechaniz’d matter as th’ organic harps
And each one’s Tunes be that, which each calls I.34
God as the universal Soul is intimately implicated with the essence of an
individual identity as He ‘organizes and shapes it and endows it with its own
living
individuality’.
35
Accordingly,
32
the
universal
Soul
implies
the
Ashton, The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 76.
John Beer, Coleridge’s Poetic Intelligence (London: Macmillan, 1977), p. 64.
33
See, Paul Magnuson, ‘The “Conversation” poems’, in The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge,
ed. by Lucy Newlyn (Cambridge, England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 3244 (p. 3-4).
See, Richard Berkeley, ‘Silence and the Pantheistic Sublime in Coleridge’s Early Poetry’,
Coleridge Bulletin: The Journal of the Friends of Coleridge, 24 (2004), 59-67 (p. 62).
34
The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge II, ed. by E. H. Coleridge (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1912), pp. 1022-23.
35
Peter Barry, ‘Coleridge the Revisionary: Surrogacy and Structure in the Conversation Poems’,
The Review of English Studies, New Series, 51 (2000), 600-616 (pp. 610, 613); Albert Gérard,
‘Counterfeiting Infinity: “The Eolian Harp” and the Growth of Coleridge’s Mind’, Journal of English
and Germanic Philology, 60 (1961), 411-422 (p. 413).
65
interconnectedness of the universe in a sense that the correspondence between
‘all the components of this scene, linked as it is by the intellectual breeze’,
points to ‘a link between all living things, including human beings’.36
Further, in ‘Frost at Midnight’, Coleridge provides the idea of a God who,
even after creation, deeply engages with the universe by shaping, moving in,
and expressing Himself through nature. Addressing the sleeping child, Hartley,
the poet closes the poem with a passage of blessing for him by contrasting the
deficiency of his own early education with Hartley’s future in nature. Whereas
the poet himself was ‘reared / In the great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim, / And
saw nought lovely but the sky and stars’ (ll. 51-3), he expresses the hope that
his son will attain an intimate relationship with nature and discover a sense of
freedom in its permanent beauty:37
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
[. . .]
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee (ll. 54-57, 65)
For Coleridge, nature in this passage is not just the natural world, but a
revelation of a divine creative process.38 He understands the natural world as
the language of God:
36
37
38
Beer, Coleridge’s Poetic Intelligence, p. 66.
See, Beer, Coleridge’s Poetic Intelligence, pp. 138-140.
See, Beer, Coleridge’s Variety: Bicentennary Studies (London: Macmillan, 1974), p. 75.
66
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself. (ll. 59-62)
He also refers to ‘Religious meanings in the forms of Nature!’ in ‘Fears in
Solitude’ (ll. 24). At the same time, God engages Himself with the universe
actively through the language of nature in a sense that Coleridge ‘encourages
Hartley to look forward to the divine instruction of an immanent God’: ‘Great
universal Teacher! He shall mould / Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask’ (ll.
63-4).39 As Coleridge declared to Southey, ‘I am a Berkleian’, it may be worth
pointing out that George Berkeley (1685-1753) developed an account of the
visible worlds as God’s language in terms of an interaction between the Creator
and the creature40:
This Visual Language proves not a Creator merely, but a provident
Governor, actually and intimately present, and attentive to all our interests
and motions, who watches over our conduct, and takes care of our
minutest actions and designs throughout the whole course of our lives,
informing, admonishing, and directing incessantly, in a most evident and
sensible manner.41
In a letter to John Thelwall, Coleridge also communicates God’s active
involvement with the world: ‘there is an Omnipresent Father of infinite power,
39
Matthew Vanwinkle, ‘Fluttering on the Grate: Revision in “Frost at Midnight”’, Studies in
Romanticism, 43 (2004), 583-598 (p. 586).
40
CL I, p. 335.
41
George Berkeley, Alciphron, in The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, ed. by A. A.
Luce and T. E. Jessop, vol. iii (London: Nelson, 1950), p. 160. See, Magnuson, ‘The
“Conversation” poems’, p. 37.
67
wisdom, & Goodness, in whom we all of us move, & have our being.’42 Thus
‘God is everywhere! [. . .] Himself our Father, and the World our Home.’ 43
‘God’s animating and inclusive ubiquity’ can be extended to non-humans in a
sense that Coleridge calls ‘even my Cat Sister in the Fraternity of universal
Nature. Owls I respect & Jack Asses I love [. . .] May the Almighty
Pantisocratizer of Souls pantisocratize the Earth.’ 44 In the long run, for
Coleridge, God as the universal Soul and Teacher is intimately immanent in the
universe in a way that He is involved in each individual of the natural world as
well as human beings, upon which the inter-relatedness of the universe is
based.
1.2. The power of love
With respect to his searching for the unity of the universe, Coleridge’s idea
of God is clearly based on Priestley and Spinoza. By conceiving God as being
closely related with the essence of each individual in the universe, he
emphasises a unity, rather than a distinction, between God and the universe.
Yet, for Coleridge, the power of love, which springs from God, also plays a key
role in discovering the inter-relatedness of the universe. The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner has been understood from various perspectives, but the main
focus here will be on the relational aspect between the Mariner and the
albatross, and the Mariner and the community. One of the Mariner’s central
experiences throughout the poem is a profound sense of isolation: the
42
CL I, p. 280.
Lines Written in the Album at Elbingerode, in the Hartz Forest (ll. 37, 39), in CPW I, p. 316.
44
Perry, Coleridge and the Uses of Division, p. 76.
CL I, p. 121.
43
68
background of the tale he tells the Wedding Guest indicates his separation from
the community; the story of his experience is associated with a sea which has
never been explored before and is a remote place far from the community and
civilisation; and the murder of the albatross leaves him completely alone in a
primitive place. Such isolation lends weight to one of the most unsettling
elements of the poem: the Mariner’s unmotivated murder of the bird. Why did
he kill it? Although it appears to be motiveless, the inexplicable act of violence
has the disastrous result of rendering him alone. After killing the albatross, the
Mariner is gripped by: ‘fear at my heart, as at a cup, / My life-blood seemed to
sip!’ (ll, 204-5), issuing in a scene wherein his fellow sailors die in a
nightmarish vision of Life-in-Death:
One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eyes.
Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one. (ll. 212-19)
Finally, the Mariner succumbs to his exile in a vast desolate sea:
Alone, alone, all, alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony. (ll. 232-35)
69
Whereas his motive for the murder is unclear, the result of his act of violence is
clear, leading as it does to an experience of disconnectedness and isolation.
Worse still, he experiences a deep separation from God and, feeling his ‘heart
as dry as dust’, a detachment from the power of human and religious love45:
I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer gusht,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.
(ll, 244-47)
If we further explore the religious and biblical allusions within the poem,
the Mariner’s experience comes to signify a dynamic of sin and punishment. In
fact, in his ‘Prefatory Note’ to the fragmentary ‘Wanderings of Cain’, Coleridge
explains how ‘The Ancient Mariner was written instead’ of ‘Wanderings of
Cain’.46 Just as the Mariner undergoes a nightmarish voyage after his act of
murder, so Cain is driven into exile after killing his brother. Interestingly, both
metaphors – of voyage and of exile - frame murders with shared consequences.
Like the Mariner, Coleridge’s Cain expresses a wounded sense of abandonment:
The Mighty One that persecuteth me is on this side and on that; he
pursueth my soul like the wind, like the sand-blast [. . .] I desire to die
[. . .] the clouds in heaven look terribly on me; the Mighty One who is
against me speaketh in the wind of the cedar grove; and in silence am I
dried up [. . .] the spirit within me is withered, and burnt up with extreme
45
See, J. Robert Barth, S.J., Coleridge and the Power of Love (Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 1988), p. 63.
46
Susan Eilenberg, ‘Voice and Ventriloquy in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, in The Rime of
The Ancient Mariner, ed. by Paul H. Fry (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 282-313 (p. 298).
70
agony [. . .] I have prayed, and have not been heard; and how can I be
afflicted more than I already am? (WC, 33-47, 164-172).
As Coleridge was aware, one of the fatal consequences of sin in the Old
Testament is an exile (most notably, the exile of Adam and Eve), which implies
a broken relationship between God and his people. Cain’s cries for his unheard
prayer resonate with his experience of suffering following his devastating
separation from God and community, an exile motif Coleridge repeats in the
Mariner’s voyage in order to directly connect it back to a dynamic of sin and
punishment.
First of all, after going through a nightmarish drama caused by his act of
murder, the Mariner begins to recognise the life of nature around him:
The moving Moon went up the sky.
And no where did abide:
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside—
Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship’s huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red. (ll. 263-271)
He then watches the water-snakes whose attire was ‘Blue, glossy green, and
velvet black,’ and, for him, ‘every track / Was a flash of golden fire.’ In other
words, he is now able to see the life and the significance of nature through his
imagination in a sense that he describes them as ‘O happy living things.’ He
71
mentions that ‘no tongue / Their beauty might declare.’ Further, he deepens this
newly recognised relationship by blessing them: ‘A spring of love gushed from
my heart, / And I blessed them unaware’ (ll. 282-285). At that moment he ‘could
pray’ and finally his neck became free from the Albatross which ‘sank like lead
into the sea’. It is through the power of love that the Mariner can re-establish
his broken relationship with the world beyond himself. As Harding puts it, the
‘spring of love enables the Mariner to transcend his selfhood for the first
time.’47 Just as the motivation for the murder is not shown, so the reason for
the ‘spring of love’ is not stated. As Barth suggests ‘in the depth of his despair,
love can come to him only by grace’,48 and it may be God that allows him to feel
love for something other than himself. Following this argument, Harding also
refers to the divine origin of the ‘spring of love’.49 In fact, at the end of the
poem, the Mariner refers to the source of love in God: ‘He prayeth best, who
loveth best / All things both great and small; / For the dear God who loveth us, /
He made and loveth all.’ (ll. 614-167).
What needs to be observed here is the act of interpretation which brings
about the summarized Christian moral virtue as a crucial way into understanding
the Mariner’s attempt to recover his broken relationship. The sole authority for
the narrative of the Mariner’s experience is the Mariner himself, who
experienced
the
events
as
an
eye
47
witness.
As
experience
requires
Ibid., p. 63.
Barth, Coleridge and the Power of Love, p. 65.
49
Anthony Harding mentions that ‘it is not the recipients of the blessing who are important, but
its divine origin [. . .] It does not matter whether the object of his love is water-snakes, stars or
Polar Spirits; the important thing is that God, acting perhaps through some “kind saint”, has made
the Mariner’s self a centre and source instead of an enclosing and defensive wall’, Coleridge and
the Idea of Love: Aspects of Relationship in Coleridge’ Thought and Writing (London: Cambridge
University Press, 1974), p. 63.
48
72
interpretation in order to be shared with others within the context of a
community, the Mariner tries to articulate the events of his voyage in order to
convey his experience to others. In other words, his telling of his experience
implies his willingness to belong to the human community. The poem has a
double structure in terms of the setting: the repetition of the tale in a social
context, and the content of the tale framed by a primitive sea. In the final Part
VII, which itself takes place in a social setting, the Mariner offers a wellsummarized Christian moral virtue; ‘O sweeter than the marriage-feast, / To
walk together to the kirk / With a goodly company!-/And all together pray’ (ll.
601-6). That is, the Mariner takes from his nightmarish and primitive voyage a
Christian moral virtue. Though the voyage of the Mariner is coloured by its
primitive setting, supernatural powers and the primitive mind of the Mariner, his
summary of his experience indicates a Christian value. This echoes back
through Part I, where the Albatross is called ‘a Christian soul’, and the bird is
said to perch ‘for vespers nine’. After the murder of the bird, there are a
number of Christian images and the language of a society, ‘God’s own head’, ‘O
Christ!’, ‘the cross’, and ‘a hellish thing’ and ‘Twas right’, in Part II.
The use of Christian language in the narrative of the tale, however, is not
random or arbitrary. If we look at the two interruptions of the Wedding Guest
during the narration, it can be suggested that the Mariner is actually reinterpreting his experience according to the context and language of
Christianity and the society to which the Wedding Guest belongs. In Part III, the
Mariner describes the scene of his shipmates dropping dead one by one, each
turning his face with a ‘ghastly pang’ and cursing the Mariner ‘with his eyes’ (ll.
73
212-23): and, at the beginning of Part IV, the Wedding Guest interrupts him, ‘I
fear thee, ancient Mariner! / thy glittering eye, / And thy skinny hand, so brown’
(ll. 224-229). This interruption is then followed by his tormenting cry of
loneliness, a rather subdued tone of voice; ‘the many men, so beautiful! / And
they all dead lie; / And a thousand thousand slimy things / Lived on; and so did
I’ (ll. 236-9), and haunting cry of agony using Christian language; ‘I looked to
heaven, and tried to pray / My heart as dry as dust / An orphan’s cry,’ etc. (ll.
244, 247, 257).
In Part V the Wedding Guest also interrupts him after hearing how the dead
sailors rise like ghosts, ‘groaning’, ‘stirring’, without ‘speaking’ and ‘moving
their eyes’; it was strange and eerie ‘even in a dream’ (ll. 331-334). When the
Wedding Guest interrupts him in an anxious voice, he tries to pacify his fears by
saying, ‘Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest! / ’Twas not those souls that fled in pain,
/ Which to their corses came again, / But a troop of spirits blest:’ (ll. 345-9). At
the same time, he narrates the more beautiful scenes of his story using a series
of eery metaphors: ‘when it dawned [. . .] Sweet sound rose slowly through
their mouths [. . .] the sky-lark sing / [. . .] all little birds [. . .] now like a
lonely flute; / And now it is an angel’s song [. . .] like of a hidden brook / In the
leafy month of June, / That to the sleeping woods’ (ll. 350-371). As Raimonda
Modiano argues, ‘the Mariner borrows the metaphors composing his aural
reverie from a landscape that belongs to the Wedding Guest’s shore world. Only
in this world would one normally hear sounds of skylarks, lonely flutes or
hidden brooks.’50
50
Raimonda Modiano, ‘Words and “Languageless” Meanings: Limits of Expression in The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner’, Modern Language Quarterly 38 (1977), 40-61 (p. 51).
74
In the long run, in Parts IV and V, the frightful descriptions of the sailors’
death and rising as ghosts are followed by the interventions of the Wedding
Guest, and the Mariner appears to placate his anxieties and fears by providing a
calmer narrative and using familiar images and metaphors. That is, ‘the
Wedding Guest’s intervention occasions a sudden shift of narrative perspective
in the Mariner’s tale which meliorates the horror of previous scenes.’51 If we
take into consideration the summarized Christian moral virtue in Part VII and
the dynamics of the interchanges between the Mariner and the Wedding Guest
in Parts IV and V, it can be argued that we can see ‘in his account some of the
marks of events reinterpreted to harmonize with a more comfortable theology,
particularly, later in the poem, with the Wedding-Guest’s more orthodox ideas
and fears about ghost and spirits’. 52 When the Mariner moves from his
experience into a social language shared by those around him, the process of
interpretation seems to be inevitable. And it is through this process of
interpretation that he can extend his experience of ‘a spring of love’ in ‘the
water-snakes’ to the Christian moral virtue of love, which expresses the
interrelatedness of the universe.
Coleridge also develops an account of the way the power of love brings
about a sense of the inter-relatedness of the universe in his Conversation
Poems. After proclaiming ‘the one Life within us and abroad’ in ‘The Eolian
Harp’, the poet confesses that the power of love permeates ‘the one Life’:
51
Ibid., p. 51.
Harding, The Reception of Myth in English Romanticism (Columbia: University of Missouri
Press, 1995), p. 53.
52
75
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where—
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so fill’d;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.53 (ll. 29-33)
Further, in ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’, Coleridge urges us to be aware
of the love between nature and us:
[. . .] Henceforth I shall know
That Nature ne’er deserts the wise and pure;
No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,
No waste so vacant, but may well employ
Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart
Awake to Love and Beauty! (ll. 59-64)
In fact, Coleridge was not able to join his friends for a walk around his cottage,
owing to an accident. 54 He, however, transcends this physical separation by
confirming the connectedness of nature, his friends and himself in terms of the
‘Love and Beauty’ held in his poetic imagination. It is a sense of love that brings
together humanity and nature into the experience of interrelatedness or
communion.
1.3. Natural philosophy: polarity and opposition
While Coleridge focuses on a monistic idea and love of God in his early
53
Added in 1803.
‘In the June of 1797 some long-expected friends paid a visit to the author’s cottage; and on the
morning of their arrival, he met with an accident, which disabled him from walking during the
whole time of their stay. One evening, when they had left him for a few hours, he composed the
following lines in the garden-bower’, CPW I, p. 178.
54
76
years, he turns to natural philosophy in searching for his grand theory for the
unity of the universe in his later years. If Coleridge was interested in the
external appearances of nature in his early years, he showed an enthusiasm for
nature as an object of a scientific investigation in his later years. For Coleridge,
the idea of polarity is a governing structure in a sense that he tries to
categorise the natural phenomena according to it.55 Perhaps the most succinct
of Coleridge’s definitions of the idea of polarity is found in a footnote to one of
the numbers of his periodical, The Friend: ‘EVERY POWER IN NATURE AND IN
SPIRIT must evolve an opposite, as the sole means and condition of its
manifestation: AND ALL OPPOSITION IS A TENDENCY TO RE-UNION. This is
the universal Law of Polarity or essential Dualism.’56 Particular attention must
be paid to two phrases, ‘IN NATURE AND IN SPIRIT’ and ‘A TENDENCY TO
RE-UNION’. The idea is dialectical in that two opposites tend to re-union, and
it is concerned with immateriality as well as materiality. In this respect,
Coleridge proposes the dialectical principle of polarity as the basis for all of life.
First of all, Coleridge explains how God created the Light from the
Darkness through division and separation, and ‘the two poles of the material
Universe are established, viz. Light and Gravitation.’57 The different things are
divided and separated, but they are re-connected. In the Notebooks, Coleridge
provides some empirical evidences for how ‘Extremes meet’: ‘Insects by their
smallness, the Mammoth by its hugeness, terrible. Sameness in a Waterfall, in
55
See, A. D. Snyder, The Critical Principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites as Employed by
Coleridge (Ann Arbor: Univeristy of Michigan, 1918); Owen Barfield, What Coleridge Thought
(Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 1971); Cutsinger, ‘Coleridgean Polarity and Theological Vision’; Mary
Perkins, Coleridge’s Philosophy: the Logos as Unifying Principle (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994).
56
Friend I, p. 94.
57
CL IV, p. 771
77
the foam Islands of a fiercely boiling Pool at the bottom of the Waterfall, from
infinite Change [. . .] Dark with excess of Light. Self-absorption & Worldlymindedness [. . .] Despotism and ochlocracy.’
58
Interestingly, Coleridge
observes that each pair consists of two different things but they appear to have
something in common. Further, he uses the analogy of magnetic power in order
to explain the one power of two opposite forces. ‘The Magnetic Power’ works
‘at once positively and negatively, Attraction and Repulsion’, but they are ‘the
two Forces of the one magnetic Power’. Coleridge mentions that ‘Opposite
powers’ are the two forms but are ‘always of the same kind, and tend to
union’.59 As the one magnetic power is the combination of an attraction and a
repulsion between the two poles, two opposite forces are associated with one
power in the dynamic of polarity.
Coleridge develops a dialectical way of understanding the re-union of two
opposite powers. For him, ‘the Identity of Thesis and Antithesis is the
substance of all Being’, and ‘the opposite energies are retained in that
Synthesis.’60 In his the Theory of Life, Coleridge asserts that ‘life is the unity of
thesis and antithesis, position and counterposition [. . .] these unite in a
synthesis’.61 Thus ‘the Life of Nature consists in the tendency of the Poles to
re-unite, and to find themselves in the re-union.’62 Every thing or phenomenon
subsists in the identity of two counter-powers, and it needs to be noted that the
two opposing powers, energies, or counterpositions, do not disappear, but are
58
CN I, 1725; See, Thomas McFarland, Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin: Wordsworth,
Coleridge, and Modalities of Fragmentation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), p.
294.
59
60
61
62
CCS, p. 24; See, Owen Barfield, What Coleridge Thought, p. 203, n. 24.
Friend I, p. 94
TL, p. 51-2.
CL IV, p. 771.
78
retained in synthesis. In this sense, the idea of unity is regarded as distinctionin-unity, the unity-of-distinction, distinction without division, or multeity in
unity, etc. The unity of two opposing powers is the one of not homogeneity, but
diversity.
One of the challenges in Coleridge’s understanding of polarity is that he
applies this concept to the whole of nature. He conceives polarity as ‘a Law
which reigns through all Nature [. . .] the manifestation of one power by
opposite forces’. 63 Polarity is a law and principle which exists throughout
nature. The problem is how we recognise the law acting through the whole of
nature. In fact, Coleridge admits that we cannot explain it rationally: ‘in the
question of Life, I know no possible answer, but God.’64 Barfield maintains that
‘the apprehension of polarity is itself the basic act of imagination’.65 That is, the
idea of polarity can be comprehended by the power of imagination. The
following two passages enable us to see how Coleridge senses ‘the
manifestation of one power by opposite forces’ through the power of
imagination:
O said I as I looked on the blue, yellow, green, & purple green Sea, with
all its hollows & swells, & cut-glass surfaces [. . .] But it was not, the
mind within me was struggling to express the marvelous distinctness &
unconfounded personality of each of the million millions of forms, & yet
the undivided Unity in which they subsisted.66
63
S. T. Coleridge’s Treatise On Method: As Published in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana , ed. by
Alice D. Snyder (London: Constable and Co LTD, 1934), p. 18; also Friend I, p. 479; See, Barfield,
What Coleridge Thought, p. 35.
64
TL, p. 35.
65
Barfield, What Coleridge Thought, p. 36.
66
CN II, 2344.
79
Still as I rise, I am more & more enamoured of the marvellous playfulness
of the surface of the Hills/such swellings, startings, sinkings, and yet all
so combined as to make it impossible to look at as many/no! it was a
manifold One!67
When he sees the various differences in nature, he apprehends in his
imagination the manifestation of unity which is revealed by the different things.
Although Coleridge provides some empirical evidences and analogies for the
idea of polarity, it seems to be conjectural rather than empirical and scientific.
The idea of polarity as being conjectural, for Coleridge, is a kind of
conceptual structure through which he attempts to understand the relationship
of the differences in the universe. As Cutsinger put it, knowledge is often
involved in causing ‘the problem of barriers or dividing surfaces’.68 We have
witnessed how the increase of knowledge set up a barrier between the subject
and the object, or the self and the other. In a similar vein, Coleridge makes a
distinction between substantial knowledge and abstract knowledge. While the
former is concerned with existence which is ‘its own predicate, self-affirmation,
the one attribute in which all others are contained, not as parts, but as
manifestations’, the latter argues that ‘we think of ourselves as separated
beings, and place nature in antithesis to the mind, as object to subject, thing to
thought, death to life’.69 In both the Statesman’s Manual (1817) and his letter to
Lord Liverpool of the same year, Coleridge argues that man has lost ‘all
communion with life and the spirit of nature’ by adopting a few brilliant
67
CN II, 2705.
68
Cutsinger, ‘Coleridgean Polarity and Theological Vision’, p. 101.
Friend I, p. 520.
69
80
inventions or discoveries. 70 Although the increase of knowledge deepens
divisions in the universe, Coleridge tries to find a way of conceiving different
things (nature vs. the mind, object vs. subject) as being related. According to
the principle of polarity, two different things are not separated, but interrelated or re-united. The concept of polarity is a conceptual structure through
which knowledge needs to be understood for Coleridge.
1.4. The idea of evolution: individuation
Coleridge continues to develop this idea by applying the dynamic of polarity
and opposition to the relationship between humanity and the non-human natural
world. It is through the process of an evolution that the latter is related with the
former. For him, nature is not static but dynamic in that it is an evolutionary
process, based upon polarity and progressive individuation as the principle of
its direction. Coleridge defines ‘life as the principle of individuation, or the
power which unites a given all into a whole that is presupposed by all its
parts’.71 As the definition implies, the principle of individuation is involved in
both differentiation and reunion. All classes of nature have the tendency to
independent existence which is shown by the process of individuation, and
therefore they are able to maintain for themselves a distinction from the
universal life of the planet, for example, from the first rudiments of
individualized life in the lowest classes of its two great poles, the vegetable and
animal creation, to its crown and consummation in the human body. 72 At the
70
71
72
SM, p. 72-3; CL IV, pp. 760-1.
TL, p. 42.
Ibid., pp. 47-8, 67, 70.
81
same time, this process of individuation, however, is neither separation nor
fragmentation in that it unites all classes into a whole. In life, thesis and
antithesis, or position and counter-position, unite in a synthesis, and Coleridge
explains how the synthesis of fish and insect can be found in birds and how the
vegetable and animal worlds, thesis and antithesis, are united in a higher form.73
The principle of individuation is not just differentiation, but ‘unity in multeity’.74
The process of individuation is evolutionary because ‘the individuation
itself must be a tendency to the ultimate production of the highest and most
comprehensive individuality’.75 For Coleridge, it is in man that the progressive
individuation of nature’s evolution is completed. He describes man as ‘the
highest of the class’.76 Moreover, we need to be aware that the principle of
individuation as the synthesis of thesis and antithesis does not exclude thesis
and antithesis, but includes them in synthesis. Accordingly, man as the highest
of the class has all the previous stages and forms in nature: ‘The whole force of
organic power has attained an inward and centripetal direction. He has the
whole world in counterpoint to him, but he contains an entire world within
himself [. . .] Man himself is a syllepsis, a compendium of Nature the
Microcosm ! [. . .] he is a revelation of Nature! [. . .] the sympathy and the
inter-communion with Nature.’77 The implication is that humanity and the nonhuman natural world are not separated from, but interrelated with each other in
terms of the evolutionary process of individuation.
73
74
75
76
77
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
Ibid.,
pp. 77, 83.
p. 42.
p. 50.
p. 48.
pp. 48, 85-6
82
Yet, Coleridge describes the uniqueness of man as the image of God: ‘that
last work, in which Nature did not assist as handmaid under the eye of her
sovereign Master, who made Man in his own image, by superadding selfconsciousness with self-government, and breathed into him a living soul.’78 As
a result, he admits that there is a ‘wide chasm between man and the noblest
animals of the brute creation, which no perceivable or conceivable difference of
organization is sufficient to overbridge’.79 It is questionable whether the idea of
the wide chasm is compatible with the idea of the one life and the
interrelatedness of the universe. The uniqueness of man and the idea of the
wide chasm are likely to bring about a sense of hierarchy in the relationship
between humanity and non-human natural world.
So far, it has been argued that Coleridge tries to recognise the unity of the
universe through, firstly, a monistic notion and love of God in his early years;
secondly, the concepts of polarity, individuation and evolution, in his later years.
Now the question is how this idea of inter-relatedness is associated with
ecotheology. Although it seems that Coleridge is able to understand the unity of
the universe through a religious faith in his early years and natural philosophy
in his later years, each way of attaining it has its own drawbacks from the
perspective of ecotheology. What matters in ecotheology is the independent and
sacred value of the natural world within the context of the immanence and
transcendence of God. But Coleridge’s thought about the unity of the universe
in his early and later years raises some issues in relation to ecotheology: (i)
Coleridge understands nature in terms of materiality in his monistic notion and
78
79
Ibid., 90-1
TL, p. 33.
83
love of God, and evolutionary idea of individuation. Yet, it is often pointed out
that it became a sheer projection of his mind; (ii) The idea of evolution seems to
foster a hierarchical relationship between humankind and the natural world, and
it is also arguable whether the scientific and philosophical notion of the interrelatedness can be religious; (iii) The monistic idea of God in Priestley’s
Unitarianism causes the problem of pantheism. Now each issue will be
examined separately, and so it will be shown that Coleridge’s way of dealing
with the problems has ecotheological implications.
2. The relationship between the mind and nature
2.1. Nature as a projection of the mind
With regard to the independent value of nature, one of the difficulties is that
Coleridge’s notion of nature is often understood merely as the construction of
the mind. In his early poetry he clearly shows his interest in the beautiful
outward form of nature, but some critics argue that he eventually rejects the
materiality of nature and conceives it as a projection of the mind. Discussing a
passage from The Friend, Anya Taylor claims that the oneness of man and
nature is only the creation of the mind. The quoted passage is this: ‘the
productive power, which is in nature as nature, is essentially one (i.e. of one
kind) with the intelligence, which is in the human mind above nature.’ 80 This
passage is used as a statement that the creative force in nature is the same
kind of force as that which activates human imagination, but Taylor criticises
this view: the passage is ‘wrenched out of context’ and just ‘one among many
80
Friend I, pp. 497-8.
84
possible hypotheses’. 81 According to him, human beings have a religious
instinct that tends to find meaning in everything, for example, nature, trees,
running streams or even stones. Further, this instinct engenders the belief that
‘a coherence out there corresponds to the coherence we imagine we perceive’
and finally ‘nature and man share an essential oneness.’ Taylor, however,
argues that ‘the belief is not a fact discovered about the external world but a
creation of man’s own’. Thus the oneness of the universe is just a construction
of the mind, engendered by the religious instinct. In addition, Taylor points out
that Coleridge himself refers to the chasm between human perception and the
external world in his comments on science: in order to find connections with the
life of animals and plants the scientist needs to find ‘a correspondent
mechanism’, and must remind himself that this sense of connection ‘originates
in the mind [. . .] and could never [. . .] have been derived from outward
experience’.82
Edward Kessler even perceives in Coleridge a hostility to nature. Coleridge
asserts that ‘every appearance of origination in Nature is but a shadow of our
own casting [. . .] a reflection from our own Will or Spirit’, and therefore
‘Nature itself creates neither form nor matter; hence man is superior to
Nature.’ 83 It is true that Coleridge made a number of statements concerning
counter-sensuous anti-empiricism in his later years. First of all, praising the
‘power of abstraction’, Coleridge complained at ‘the despotism of the eye’ and
81
Anya Taylor, ‘Coleridge and “Essential Oneness,”’ Wordsworth Circle, 16 (1985), 29-32.
Friend I., p. 499.
83
AR, p. 268; Edward Kessler, Coleridge’s Metaphors of Being (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1979), p. 17; see also, pp. 30, 32, 35.
82
85
‘the tyranny of the Eye’, and attempts ‘to emancipate the mind from’ it.84 For
him, the ‘inward sense’ which is able to perceive ‘invisible realities or spiritual
objects’ is superior to any outward sense.85 Thus he makes ‘the Senses out of
the Mind – not the Mind from the Senses’.86 Further, Coleridge identifies the
self with mind87: ‘I seem to exist, as it were, almost wholly within myself, in
thoughts rather than in things.’ 88 Belittling sensory experience and elevating
instead the power of the mind, Coleridge leaves us with an impression that he
rejects the materiality of nature and regards it as the construction of the mind.
On the one hand, their argument, to some extent, is feasible. The
interpretation of nature is given not by nature itself, but by human perception,
and therefore knowledge about nature is liable to be projected by the latter. As
a result, there is an inevitable gap between nature itself and human perception.
Coleridge himself appears to be aware of the problem, and, in Dejection: An
Ode, he famously mentions that ‘We receive but what we give, / And in our life
alone does Nature live’ (ll. 47-48). On the other hand, as John Beer asserts,
nature and its relationship to humanity and God ‘was always at the heart of
Coleridge’s career, from his early minute observations of nature to his final
meditations on God’.89 If nature is concerned with the issue of the source for a
84
Logic, ed. by J. R. de J. Jackson (Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 242-3.
Coleridge also argues that ‘Philosophy by a long and arduous discipline gradually
desensualizing the mind, and emancipating it first from the tyranny of the Eye’, in Shorter Works
and Fragments II, ed. by H. J. Jackson and J. R. de J. Jackson (Princeton University Press, 1995),
p. 900; see, Perry, Coleridge and the Uses of Division, p. 39.
85
Friend I, p. 156; Perry, Coleridge and the Uses of Division, p. 38.
86
Table Talk I, p. 312 (21 July 1832); Perry, Coleridge and the Uses of Division, p. 39.
87
Charles J. Rzepka, The Self as Mind: Vision and Identity in Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats
(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 12, 25; See, Perry, Coleridge and the
Uses of Division, p. 48.
88
CL V, p. 198-9; CL II, p. 881.
89
Laura Dassow Walls, ‘Coleridge’s Responses, Volume III: Coleridge on Nature and Vision’, The
Coleridge Bulletin: The Journal of the Friends of Coleridge, New Series, 33 (2009), 128-132 (p.
86
poetic imagination and knowledge in his early period, he treats nature with a
scientific and philosophic knowledge in his later period. And we should note that
nature always becomes ‘an active partner in the human mind’s quest’ to find the
unity of the universe. 90 In the previous section, it was already seen that
Coleridge essentially associates the scientific and philosophic understanding of
nature with the unity of the universe in terms of the ideas of polarity and
individuation. Discussing ‘The Eolian Harp’ and ‘Dejection: An Ode’, I shall
argue that, in spite of the tension between the imaginative power of the mind
and the sensory experience of nature, the materiality of nature plays a crucial
role in a poetic imagination and knowledge.
2.2. The problems of solipsism and dualism
First of all, it is necessary to clarify the implication of the idea of nature as
a projection of the mind in relation to solipsism and dualism. Whereas early
Scholasticism had conceived God, the soul and the world as substances, the
individual began to be understood as a conscious self after the Enlightenment.
When we regard nature as the construction of the mind, we presuppose that the
source of the meaning is the human mind. In other words, the self as the
conscious self is understood as the source of meaning that is able to create
meaning. The self defines reality, rather than being defined by it.91 As R. Cohen
argues, the self has become the unifying centre of knowing. 92 And yet, the
128).
90
Ibid., p. 129.
91
Louis Dupré, The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture (New
Haven and London: Yale UP, 2004), p.46.
92
Ralph Cohen, ‘Association of Ideas and Poetic Unity’, Philological Quarterly, 36 (1957), 464475.
87
conscious self is beset with the problem of solipsism. If the self is regarded as
source of meaning, it is not able to recognise the identity of the other any more.
The implication is that the real ceases to be truly distinct from the self.93 For
example, the notion of nature for Coleridge and Wordsworth has been often
criticised as the mere projection of the poets.
Further, the self as the conscious subject confronts another problem in
dualism. Although Descartes’ idea of res cogitans describes the self as the
conscious self, he understands the person as consisting of two substances, mind
and body. The notion of res cogitans thus leads to a dualism in the sense that
only the mind is associated with the source of meaning. In order to bridge the
gap between body and mind, the French materialists of the eighteenth century,
La Mettrie, Diderot, Holbach, and Condillac, reduced the self to the dynamic of
materialism. According to them, the mind, like the body, can be explained in
terms of the interactions of forces and the simple or complex arrangement of
material particles.94
2.3. David Hartley: a scientific approach to the body and mind
Intellectuals had attempted to explain the nature of the human in the light of
scientific investigations since the Enlightenment. One of the key issues was
how to understand the relationship between body and mind on a scientifically
proven basis. Historians of neuroscience, of biological psychology, and of
neurology agree to view the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries ‘as a
93
Dupré, The Enlightenment, p. 76.
‘Mechanistic materialism’, in The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy, ed. by Nicholas
Bunnin and Jiyuan Yu. Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Blackwell Reference Online. [accessed 24
February 2011].
94
88
crucial period for the emergence of an unprecedented series of hypotheses and
discoveries concerning the brain and nervous system’ in the sense that various
attempts were made to find a continuity between body and mind or to articulate
an embodied notion of mind, by thinkers such as Darwin, Gall, Priestly, Cabanis,
and Bell. 95 In The Poetics of Sensibility, Jerome McGann also mentions that
writers from Locke to Priestly tried to be ‘involved in overturning the
traditional understanding of the relations of mind and body’.96 This historical
context accounts for ‘a Romantic fascination with the brain, the nerves, and the
continuity between body and psyche’, and the new dimensions of terms like
‘sensibility’, ‘nervous’, ‘organic’, ‘natural’, ‘universal’, and ‘brain’, in the
Romantic discursive field. 97 Especially Hartley’s Observations on Man was a
very influential work, which dominated psychological thinking in this period. In
1774, Priestly wrote that the Observations ‘contains a new and most extensive
science’ and promised that ‘the study of it [. . .] will be like entering upon a
new world’. He added: ‘I think myself more indebted to this one treatise, than to
all the books I ever read beside; the scriptures excepted.’98 It was a pioneering
attempt ‘to treat mind as a scientific object, to explain mental events in terms of
principles or laws analogous to those which appear to be operative in physical
events’.99 Hartley’s ideas, being associated with neurophysiological psychology,
thus played a key role in viewing the mind as being embodied, and in
95
Alan Richardson, British Romanticism and the Science of the Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge
96
Ibid., p. 26.
97
Ibid., p. 12.
98
Richard Allen, ‘David Hartley’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2012 edition)
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/hartley/ [accessed 3 March 2011].
99
Richard Haven, ‘Coleridge, Hartley, and the Mystics’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 20 (1959),
477-494 (p. 480).
89
understanding the continuity between body and mind in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.
Intriguingly, Coleridge was very interested in this philosophy. There are a
number of passages which show that Coleridge read his works and became an
ardent follower of his philosophy. He had mentioned Hartley, when writing to
his brother George on 6 November, 1794: ‘And after a diligent, I may say, an
intense study of Locke, Hartley and others who have written most wisely on the
Nature of Man — I appear to myself to see the point of possible perfection at
which the World may perhaps be destined to arrive.’100 And in December, he
wrote to Robert Southey: ‘I am a compleat Necessitarian — and understand the
subject as well almost as Hartley himself — but I go farther than Hartley and
believe the corporeality of thought — namely, that it is motion.’101 In fact, I
have already mentioned Bate and Kroeber who endeavoured to uncover a
material aspect of nature in Romantic poetry. More recently, some critics try to
find a new way of articulating the relationship between the mind and nature or
to reaffirm the importance of the natural history tradition, challenging the limits
of conventional ‘ecocriticism’ or the dominance of ‘the technological hubris’.102
100
101
102
CL I, p. 127.
CL I, p. 138
In Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics (Cambridge, Mass; London:
Harvard UP, 2007), Timothy Morton examines the idea of nature in Romanticism, and he claims
that ‘Nature wavers in between the divine and the material. Far from being something “natural”
itself, nature hovers over things like a ghost’. He regards ‘Nature’ as ‘a transcendental term in a
material mask’. Accordingly, for him, it is ‘the idea of nature itself’ that inhibits genuinely
‘ecological politics, ethics, philosophy, and art’. Then he proposes ‘a new way of doing ecological
criticism’, which he calls ‘dark ecology’. In dark ecology, ‘far from remaining natural, ecocriticism
must admit that it is contingent and queer’, see pp. 14-5, 140-43; Jonathan Skinner raises the
question of the relationship between an inside and an outside, and points out that ‘the natural
history tradition which helped sharpen’ an awareness of an ‘interrelatedness’, ‘a discipline of
close, scrupulous observation of nature, is disappearing’. We need to ‘revalue the “nature walk,”
and to venerate the humble, empirical tasks of “natural history”, in ways that were lost to the
technological hubris of the last century’, see ‘Editor’s Statement’, ecopoetics 1 (2001): 5-8.
90
There is no doubt that Hartley’s philosophy contributed to the development
of Coleridge’s thought on epistemology, but the question is in what sense
Coleridge’s works represent his philosophy about the relationship between the
mind and nature. Let us turn to Hartley’s ideas about the process of acquiring
knowledge in terms of the relationship between the inside and the outside.
The Observations comprises two parts; the first contains the physical doctrine
of the vibrations and the operations of the mind, and the second is concerned
with Christian religion. Hartley’s scientific understanding of the connection
between body and mind is mainly dependent upon his two theories, ‘the doctrine
of vibrations’ and ‘the doctrine of associations’ which are the living organism of
brain and nervous system and in the universe. For him, the ‘component
particles’ that constitute the nerves and brain, interact with the physical
universe suggested by Newton – a world of ‘force of attraction and repulsion’.103
Thus sensation, thought, and motion, is the result of the vibration of the minute
particles of the medullary substance of the nerves, and the aether functions as a
vibrating medium. Hartley proposes that, ‘Since therefore sensations are
conveyed to the mind, by the efficiency of corporeal causes [. . .] it seems to
me, that the powers of generating ideas, and raising them by association, must
also arise from corporeal causes’.104 It should be noted, however, that there is
no direct and immediate route from sensation to perception. The sensory stimuli
of the vibrations do not produce perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and actions,
out of sensations directly and immediately, and we need to construct and
reconstruct continuously the vibrations and sensations in order to make sense
103
104
Allen, ‘David Hartley.’
Allen, ‘David Hartley’; HOM 1, prop. 11.
91
of the world.105
The reason why the sensations and vibrations could not leave ‘any traces
or images of themselves, i.e. any ideas’ is that they are ‘infinitely divisible, in
respect of time and place’.106 Accordingly, these infinitely divisible parts need
to cohere together through the principle of associations through which sensory
inputs are turned into meaningful perceptual categories. Hartley defines ideas
as all ‘internal feelings that are not sensations’.107 The first among the ideas
thus generated are the ‘Vestiges, Types, or Images of sensations, which may be
called, Simple Ideas of Sensation’.108 The notion of simple ideas originates from
Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). According to
Locke’s understanding of the relationship between simple ideas and complex
ideas, the former are produced through passive reception, but the latter are
associated with the active production of perceptual categories. ‘The mind’,
writes Locke, ‘is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple ideas’, but ‘it
exerts several acts of its own’ through which ‘the others are framed’ out of its
simple ideas. These actions involve the capacities ‘to unite ideas together, or to
set them by one another, or wholly separate them’ in order to combine simple
ideas into complex ones.109
Although Locke’s ideas appear to be similar to Hartley’s notion of
association in terms of the process from simple ideas to complex ones, Hartley
105
Gerald M. Edelman describes these sensations as ‘a repertoire of labels from an unlabeled
world’, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: on the Matter of the Mind (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin
Press, 1992), p. 99; see, Richard Allen, David Hartley on Human Nature (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1999), pp. 51-52.
106
HOM 1, prop. 11; Allen, ‘David Hartley.’
107
HOM ; Allen, David Hartley, pp. 69-70.
108
HOM 1.1.2.8; Allen, David Hartley, pp. 69-70.
109
HU 2.12.1; Allen, David Hartley, p. 71.
92
renounces Locke’s distinction between the passive reception and the active
production in the mind. 110 If, for Locke, the starting point is the passive
reception of simple ideas, the very beginning of the process of construction, for
Hartley, is concerned with generating ideas. Hartley, in proposition 11, states
that ‘ideas, and miniature vibrations, must first be generated [. . .] before they
can be associated’.111 The power of association always requires the power of
generating ideas, and therefore association is the basic mechanism of
construction without the distinction between the passive reception and the
active production. As Allen put it, ‘the several acts by which Locke thought the
mind frames complex ideas, relations, and abstractions out of the materials and
foundations of simple ideas as thus reduced to one: the mechanism of
association recurring over and over again – an operation generating complexity
out of simplicity through repetition.’112 Accordingly, it appears that simple ideas,
generated through the dynamic of vibrations, are already involved in the
doctrine of association in terms of the act of generating ideas. For Hartley, the
whole process of making sense of the world is not a double process of
reception and production, but the sole mechanism of association.
Hartley is able to show a correlation between the outside and the inside,
between what is there outside and what is experienced inside by investigating
the mental processes through the two doctrines of vibration and association. It
should be, however, noted that he did not intend to propose ‘a philosophy of
materialism or skepticism’, but his aim was ‘to provide a scientific proof of the
110
111
112
Allen, David Hartley, pp. 80-81.
HOM 1.1.2.11; Allen, David Hartley, pp. 80-81.
Allen, David Hartley, p. 71.
93
validity of religious and ethical ideas’.113 Eventually he attempts to articulate
the idea of selfhood and Christian belief through natural laws. He regards the
human mind as ‘indued with the faculties of memory, imagination or fancy,
understanding, affection, and will’, and ‘the affections have pleasures and pains
for their objects.’114 Pleasure and pain as the common property of all biological
organisms, which are ‘internal feelings’, refer to ‘the ways in which the nerves
and brain respond to stimuli’.115 As a result, we are inclined to seek pleasurable
sensations and to avoid painful ones. One of the significant features of the
dynamic of emotion is its movement. For Hartley, emotion moves around from
one experience to word or memory. He gives an example of how ‘the
appearance of the fire, or of a knife, especially in circumstances like those in
which the child was burnt or cut, will raise up in the child’s nervous system
painful vibrations of the same kind with, but less in degree than, those which
the actual burn or wound occasioned’.116 An experience will be transferred onto
the words, and other symbols, which denote such experience, and therefore
both emotion and language are associated with each other. For Hartley, this
generative psychological operation is the transference of emotion, and the
affections after the transference are intellectual affections.
Both emotion and language play a key role in the emergence of selfhood in
the sense that individual human personalities are formed by the emotions and
the narratives of our past experience. The experience of emotion is involved in
113
Richard Haven, Patterns of Consciousness; and Essay on Coleridge (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1969), pp. 103-4.
114
HOM, Introduction, p. iii.
115
Allen, David Hartley, p. 64.
116
HOM, p. 143.
94
the act of judgement as ‘the opinions of others concerning us, when expressed
by corresponding words and actions, are principal sources of happiness and
misery’.117 We recognise ourselves as being separate from others by seeking
praise and approval and by avoiding criticism, and become aware of selfconsciousness by being aware that others are inclined to judge us. In addition,
we, as users of language, are dependent upon narratives or other words in
terms of forming our selfhood. Hartley mentions: because ‘we think in words,
both the impressions and the recurrencies of ideas will be attended with words’;
hence, ‘when a person relates a past fact, the ideas do in some cases suggest
the words, whilst in others the words suggest the ideas.’118 As the affections
are transferred onto the words, our memories or past experiences are also
transferred onto the words or other symbols. In the long run, the sense of
selfhood and the cores of our personalities are constructed by affection and
language, or intellectual affections and the words, which are subject to natural
principles.
Furthermore, in Part II of the Observations, Hartley continues to discuss
the sense of selfhood in relation to his Christian belief. As we tend to associate
emotions with their causes, we must come to associate all emotions of the self
‘with the ultimate cause, the idea of God’.119 The reason lies in the fact that
‘Since God is the source of all Good’ and is ‘associated with all our Pleasures, it
seems to follow [. . .] that the idea of God, and of the ways by which his
Goodness and Happiness are made manifest, must at last take the place of, and
117
118
119
HOM 1.4.2.95; Allen, David Hartley, p. 129; see also, HOM 1, prop. 77;Allen, ‘David Hartley.’
HOM 1.3.4.90; Allen, David Hartley, p. 116.
Haven, Patterns of Consciousness, p. 106.
95
absorb other Ideas, and He himself become [. . .] All in All’.120 Hartley regards
this state as ‘perfect self-annihilation’ which is not the annullment of being a
person in a passive and negative sense, but refers to the growth and
transformation of the self, through which human beings will become ultimately
‘partakers of the divine nature’, and they learn to love both others and God.121
What matters for Hartley is that the realisation of the process is found in a
natural environment. If a mental process, selfhood, and self-annihilation are
explained according to natural laws, the experience of the external world
fundamentally corresponds to the experience of the internal worlds of the mind
and religion. Overcoming dualism and solipsism, both physical events and
mental events attain a sense of unity without denying or undermining either of
them. Hartley attempts to articulate an internal vision through natural principles.
2.4. The unity between the external and the internal in ‘The Eolian Harp’
If we look at ‘The Eolian Harp’, we find that the poem is deeply embedded
in Hartley’s philosophy. As already seen, the poem is concerned with a vision
about the unity of the universe, but this vision is crucially associated with the
external world in the sense that the poet tries to read the vision in a natural
environment. Accordingly, the relationship between the vision and the physical
universe can be articulated within the context of Hartley’s thought. First of all,
nature becomes an activator for a mental process. As, for Hartley, the functions
of the mind are determined by physical stimuli, the awakening of a poetic mind
in ‘The Eolian Harp’ is dependent upon the harmony of a natural landscape. One
120
121
HOM I.114; Quoted by Haven, Patterns of Consciousness, p. 106.
HOM 2, prop. 67; Allen, ‘David Hartley.’
96
of the main features in the Conversation Poems is their circular structure, one
which they open with a landscape description, and move into inner meditation,
and finally return to an initial landscape. Likewise, ‘The Eolian Harp’ opens with
the invocation of ‘My pensive Sara!’ and the description of the setting, and it
turns to the mind of the poet. Finally, it returns to the initial surroundings.
In order to establish a link between nature and the poetic mind, the poet
uses the image of the harp. Abrams first called ‘attention to the wind-harp as
that favorite romantic toy, which he read as a serious analogy of the
relationship of the poetic mind to nature in the late Eighteenth century’.122 As
the harp, being struck by the wind, produces music, the imagination of the poet
is activated by nature. Thus ‘Coleridge transformed the harp into an image of
inspiration in which the poet was a harp over whom the winds of inspiration
blow.’123 It seems to be a feeling that the harp brings about first after being
struck by the wind. Coleridge wrote a letter to Southey in 1803 which alludes to
Hartley’s enduring influence in terms of the dynamic of feeling. Recalling the
room in Bristol that he shared with Southey in 1795, Coleridge says:
It argues, I am persuaded, a particular state of general feeling — & I hold,
that association depends in a much greater degree on the recurrence of
resembling states of Feeling, than on Trains of Idea [. . .] I almost think,
that Ideas never recall Ideas, as far as they are Ideas — any more than
Leaves in a forest create each other's motion — The Breeze it is that runs
thro' them / it is the Soul, the state of Feeling — . If I had said, no one
Idea ever recalls another, I am confident that I could support the
122
Richard Matlak, ‘Swift’s Aeolists and Coleridge’s Eolian Harp’, The Coleridge Bulletin: The
Journal of the Friends of Coleridge, New Series, 20 (2002), 44-53 (p. 46); See, M. H. Abrams, the
Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1953), p. 51.
123
Magnuson, ‘The “Conversation” poems’, p. 34.
97
assertion.124
According to this passage, it is the feeling [the Breeze] that evoked ideas. As
the feeling of pleasures and pains is inherent in each idea in Hartley’s
associationsim, feeling, for Coleridge, plays a crucial role in conjuring up
ideas.125 ‘The Breeze’ from this passage reminds us of ‘the desultory breeze’ in
‘The Eolian Harp’ which caresses ‘that simplest Lute’ and creates a sense of
love in a ‘coy maid half yielding to her lover’.
126
Then ‘its strings boldlier swept’ to the extent that it produces the pictures
of ‘Fairy-Land’, and eventually his poetic imagination bears the vision of ‘the
one Life’. In other words, the mental process leads to a philosophical and
theological speculation through physical stimuli. What is significant here is the
relationship between the physical stimuli of landscape and the vision of ‘the one
Life’. If the breeze belongs to an external world, the vision is part of an internal
sphere of a poetic imagination. The question is whether the experience of an
external world is separated from that of an internal sphere and the vision exists
only in a poetic imagination, or the former is correlated with the latter. The first
case causes the problems of dualism and solipsism, but the second one
suggests a sense of unity. There are two reasons that allow one to contend that
Coleridge tries to achieve a unity between them.
First, the experience of the one life takes place not only in a poetic
imagination but also in an external world. Coleridge tries to describe the unity
of the one life through the harmony of two images, light and sound, which
124
CL II, p. 962.
125
For Hartley, all our other internal feelings may be called ideas.
Also, the correspondent breeze of Wordsworth’s Prelude (1850: 1, 35).
126
98
conveys ‘varying manifestations of a single identity’: ‘A light in sound. A soundlike power in light’ (ll. 28).127 This harmonious world is full of ‘joyance’, and it
is ‘impossible not to love all things’ (ll. 29-31). Intriguingly, this world is also
found in the description of a landscape at the beginning of the poem in the
sense that the poet feels the wholeness of a natural environment around his Cot.
In a late afternoon, ‘the clouds were rich with light’, and ‘the stilly murmur of
the distant Sea / Tells us of silence’ (ll. 6, 11-2). At the same time, in the
middle of this harmonious landscape, the poet and his ‘pensive Sara’, whose
‘soft cheek reclined on his arm’, generate the blessedness of love with ‘whiteflower’d Jasmin, and the broad-leav’d Myrtle’, the emblems of ‘Innocence and
Love!’. Secondly, he extends the vision of the one life to a religious thought by
associating the presence of God with the one life. The one life is not just a
universe of harmony and love, but also a universe of God’s presence because
God is ‘the Soul of each, and God of all’ in this universe. Accordingly, we can
sense the presence of God in a natural environment as the poet identifies God
with ‘one intellectual breeze’. As the vision of the one life is found in a physical
experience as well as in a poetic imagination, the presence of God is
experienced not only in the immaterial sphere but also in nature. In this respect,
like Hartley, Coleridge attains a unity between physical events and mental
events by showing that the experience of the internal worlds of the mind and
religion fundamentally corresponds to the experience of the external world.
2.5. The passivity and activity of the mind in ‘The Eolian Harp’
127
Beer, Coleridge the Visionary, p. 151.
99
And yet, his effort to combine materialism and idealism has a tension at its
heart. First, the notion of God as ‘one intellectual breeze’ in nature causes the
problem of pantheism. Right after the vision of ‘God of all’, the poet mentions
that Sara disapproves of his idea: ‘thy more serious eye a mild reproof.’
Rejecting ‘such thoughts’, she ‘biddest me walk humbly with my God’ (ll. 51-2).
He regards the notion as ‘vain Philosophy’s aye-babbling spring’ (ll. 57). It will
later be seen how the poet deals with the problem of pantheism. Secondly, the
issue of the passivity and activity of the mind arises. In his later period, one of
the reasons why Coleridge rejected Hartley’s ideas is that the process of
association seemed to imply a passive and mechanical approach to perception
and mental acts.128 In Coleridge’s view, Hartley’s notion of associationism, in
which ‘all the reality’ is dependent upon ‘the primary sensations’ and ‘the
impressions’, is only involved in ‘controlling, determining, and modifying the
phantasmal chaos of association’. Rather than ‘distinct powers’, for example,
‘will’ and ‘reason’, it is a ‘blind mechanism’ and ‘mere lawlessness’, and
therefore ‘our whole life would be divided between the despotism of outward
impressions, and that of senseless and passive memory.’129 In this respect, for
Coleridge, association is a passive process which is not able to formulate the
mind.
If we look at the early versions of ‘The Eolian Harp’, we find how the poet
was struggling with the issue of the passivity and activity of the mind. In the
128
See, Barbara Bowen Oberg, ‘David Hartley and the Association of Ideas’, Journal of the
History of Ideas, 37 (1976), 441-454 (p. 450); Allen, David Hartley, pp. 72-73; Richardson,
British Romanticism and the Science of the Mind, p. 29; John Sutton, Philosophy and Memory
Traces: Descartes to Connectionism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 233234.
129
BL I, pp. 111, 116, 121.
100
version of 1817, we can notice the sense of passivity in that ‘many a thought
uncall’d and undetain’d / And many idle flitting phantasies, / Traverse my
indolent and passive brain’ (ll. 39-41). But the second draft of the poem (1797)
expresses the idea of passivity more clearly. Instead of ‘passive brain’, the
draft uses ‘passive Mind’ explicitly. In addition, the different understandings of
‘organic Harps’ imply a tension between passivity and activity. Unlike the final
version, the second draft provides a longer version of the famous culminating
metaphysical vision:
And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversely fram’d,
That tremble into thought, as o’ev them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all? (the final version of 1817)
And what if All of animated Life
Be but as Instruments diversly fram’d
That tremble into thought, while thro’ them breathes
One infinite and intellectual Breeze,
And all in different Heights so aptly hung,
That Murmurs indistinct and Bursts sublime,
Shrill Discords and most soothing Melodies,
Harmonious from Creation’s vast concent—
Thus God would be the universal Soul,
Mechaniz’d matter as th’ organic harps
And each one’s Tunes be that, which each calls I (l, 36-46) (the second
draft)
Here attention should be given to the understanding of ‘organic Harps’.
Whereas the Harps are described simply as ‘diversely fram’d’ in the final
101
version, the second draft stresses the diversity of the harps by articulating the
sense of their individualities in detail. All the harps are different from one
another on the grounds that they hang ‘aptly’ ‘all in different Heights’, and each
one’s tunes reveal ‘I’. Magnuson makes an interesting comment on the ‘I’ of the
second draft. If the ‘I’ is like a tune which is ‘wild’, ‘various’, and ‘random’, then
selfhood is ‘an indefinite collection of random notes, unpredictable, unconnected,
and without a unifying consciousness’.130 Here the ‘I’ as ‘an indefinite collection
of random notes’ seems to imply the passivity of the mind over and against the
notion of God as ‘the universal Soul’.131
Coleridge himself is aware of the disharmony of ‘diversely fram’d harps’,
130
Magnuson, Coleridge’s Nightmare Poetry (Charlottesville: Univesity Press of Virginia, 1974),
pp. 2-3.
131
Interestingly, the ‘I’ as an indefinite collection of random notes reminds us of Hume’s idea of
human consciousness as ‘a bundle or collection of different perceptions’. For Hume, the
imagination is ‘the foundation of all our experience’ in the sense that we can discover ‘a stable
world’ ‘only through the workings of the imagination’. He mentions that ‘I am naturally led to
regard the world, as something real and durable, and as preserving its existence, even when it is
no longer present to my perception’. He, however, argues that this real and durable world is a
fiction: ‘The smooth passage of the imagination along the ideas of the resembling perceptions
makes us ascribe to them a perfect identity. The interrupted manner of their appearance makes
us consider them as so many resembling, but still distinct beings, which appear after certain
intervals. The perplexity arising from this contradiction produces a propension to unite these
broken appearances by the fiction of a continu’d existence’. See, David Hume, A Treatise of
Human Nature, ed. by L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), pp. 252, 197,
205. Also, Cairns Craig, ‘Coleridge, Hume, and the chains of the Romantic imagination’, in
Scotland and the Borders of Romanticism, ed. Ian Duncan (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), pp. 20-37 (p. 32); But Coleridge very much opposed Hume’s skepticism. On the one
hand, he was interested in Hume’s thoughts: ‘The subject of my meditations ha[s] been the
Relations of Thoughts to Things, in the language of Hume, of Ideas to Impressions’ (CL II, p. 672,
a letter to Humphry Davy in February 1801). On the other hand, unlike Hume, Coleridge tried to
develop the nature of the human self in terms of the possibility of its link with an objective
existence or the transcendence. For Him, the primary imagination is ‘the living Power and prime
Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation
in the infinite I AM’ (BL I, p. 304). Accordingly, the primary imagination appears to the ‘the
faculty which mediates between sensation and perception, actively ordering these faculties into a
body of knowledge. Without this principle they would simply be a mere chaos of sense
impressions’. See, Peter J. Kitson, ‘Beyond the Enlightenment: The Philosophical, Scientific and
Religious Inheritance’, in A Companion to Romanticism, ed. by Duncan Wu, Blackwell Publishing,
1999.
<
29> [accessed 10 May 2013].
102
but he is able to perceive harmony out of such disharmony. Their ‘Murmurs’ are
‘indistinct’, but ‘Bursts sublime’; they create ‘Shrill Discords’, but ‘most soothing
Melodies, / Harmonious from Creation’s vast concent—’. These ‘diversely
fram’d harps’ are ‘Mechaniz’d matter’, which implies the passivity of the mind in
relation to Hartley’s mechanistic understanding of the mind, but ‘One infinite
and intellectual Breeze’ creates the unity of the universe. In spite of ‘Shrill
Discords’, the passive mind can produce a sense of unity owing to the unifying
force of God. In this strange cluster of images that seem to contain
contradictions Coleridge is working his way towards or trying to find a way to
express an idea of God as the unifying force behind this discord.
In consequence, the differences between the second draft and the final
version hint that the poet is struggling between the ideas of the passivity and
the activity of the mind. While the passivity stands out in the early version, it
becomes less conspicuous in the final version. Whether it is passivity or activity,
there is no doubt that Coleridge’s main concern is to convey the unity of the
universe. On the one hand, the second draft produces the unity of the universe
in a mechanistic sense through the interaction between ‘Mechaniz’d matter’ and
‘One infinite and intellectual Breeze’. On the other hand, the final version
creates the idea of ‘the one Life’ through the interaction between ‘that simplest
Lute’ and ‘the desultory breeze’ even before the vision of ‘organic Harps’. And
‘the one Life’ brings about the sense of joy and love contrasted with the sense
of mechanism. Yet, the fact that brain is described as ‘passive’ and Coleridge’s
‘organic Harps’ are subject to ‘one intellectual breeze’ suggests an anxiety
about the status of the activity of the mind. In this respect, William Scheuerle
103
points out rightly that the vision of ‘organic Harps’ is not a hymn, but a question
about the exercise of the mind. 132 Furthermore, that issue causes another
tension between an external world and the mind. If an external world is
dependent upon the creativity of the mind, its meaning can be regarded simply
as a projection of the mind. The complexities of this problem are explored more
fully in Coleridge’s ‘Dejection: An Ode’.
2.6. An external world and the mind in ‘Dejection: An Ode’
The two most famous lines of ‘Dejection: An Ode’ have generated a great
deal of critical attention, ‘we receive but what we give / And in our life alone
does Nature live’. They have been taken as ‘a monumental mark of the turn of
English thought from empiricism to idealism’.133 Hailing the ode as one of the
two greatest and most representative poems of the early nineteenth century, M.
H. Abrams argues that ‘Coleridge’s theory of mind’ was ‘revolutionary’.134 The
revolution or shift has been understood to occur between different pairs of
terms by different critics: ‘idealism and empiricism (or associationism)’, ‘active
and passive’, ‘inner and outer’, ‘Kant and Hartley’, ‘mind and nature’. 135 Yet,
some critics, including Murray Krieger and I. A. Richards, cast doubt on the
integrity of these binaries. While the former regards the typical Coleridgean
dichotomy of mind and nature as a ‘deceptive opposition’, the latter argues that
132
Scheuerle argues that this is ‘not a hymn but a questioning in which he wonders whether all
living nature be but organic harps that receive but give nothing except passive tunes’, ‘A
Reexamination of Coleridge’s “The Eolian Harp”’, pp. 7-8.
133
Luther Tyler, ‘Losing “A Letter”: The Contexts of Coleridge’s “Dejection”’, ELH, 52 (1985),
419-445 (p. 420).
134
The other one is Wordsworth’s ‘Intimations of Immortality’. M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the
Lamp, pp. 66, 158.
135
Tyler, ‘Losing “A Letter”’, p. 421.
104
it is just ‘linguistic illusion’.
136
Although Coleridge seems to shift from
empiricism to idealism and to develop hierarchical dualisms, attention must be
paid to the tension between mind and nature developed in the poem. If we look
closely at the interaction between them in the poem, we find that they influence
each other in terms of creating meaning and it is hard to tell which of them is
the primary cause for it.
In ‘Dejection: An Ode’, the poet reveals a desperate state of his mind in a
confessional tone. It is a failure of his ‘genial spirits’ and his ‘shaping spirit of
Imagination’, or, according to Andrew Keanie, a ‘depression’ in a psychological
sense in that the poet is ‘trapped in a colorless consciousness’ and ‘removed
from the real throb of the senses’, expressing ‘pure dullness’.137 Whether it is a
depression or failure of imagination, the fatal consequence is that he cannot feel
the beauty of nature. In Stanza II, the poet conveys ‘the sense of ‘A grief
without a pang, void, dark, and drear’ which is caused by the fact that he can
‘see’, but cannot ‘feel’, the beauty of ‘the balmy and serene eve’, ‘its peculiar
tint of yellow green of the western sky’, ‘thin clouds’, ‘the stars’ and ‘crescent
Moon’. Interestingly, referring to his past experience with an external nature, in
Stanza I he voices hopes that she will bring back his ‘genial spirits’:
Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed,
And sent my soul abroad,
Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,
Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live! (ll. 17-20)
136
Tyler, ‘Losing “A Letter”’, p. 442, n. 11, 12; see, Murray Krieger, Theory of Criticism
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), pp. 96-97; I. A. Richards, Coleridge on
Imagination, 2nd edn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960), Chapter 9.
137
Andrew Keanie, ‘Coleridge’s Capable Negativity in “Dejection: an Ode’’’, p. 284.
105
Here it should be noted that external nature has been a stimulus to his ‘genial
spirits’ in the past, and the poet is still yearning for the similar interaction. The
Stanza II displays his desperate effort to retrieve the power through the act of
gazing: ‘Have I been gazing on the western sky [. . .] And still I gaze.’
Yet, from Stanza III to VI, he proclaims that he abandons hope of such
inspiration from an external nature but instead he turns to look within. Most of
all, he concludes that it was ‘a vain endeavour’ to ‘gaze for ever on that green
light in the west’ for ‘winning the passion and the life’, and realises that their
‘fountains are within’. He then makes the famous declaration:
O Lady! We receive but what we give
And in our life alone does Nature live (ll. 47-48)
For Coleridge, nature becomes a projection of the mind on the grounds that it
cannot affect our feelings and emotions any more, and becomes dependent upon
the mind in terms of its meanings. Therefore the inner ‘soul’ itself ‘must issue
forth a light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud, enveloping the Earth’. Notably, ‘Joy’,
which is given only ‘to the pure’, is thought of as ‘the spirit and the power’
which ‘wedding Nature to us gives in dower / A new Earth and new Heaven’.
This new Earth and new Heaven does not correlate with an external world but
is a sheer projection of the mind in that it is ‘undreamt of by the sensual’ but
exists ‘in ourselves’.
But, after going through the painful experience of ‘a grief without a pang’,
in stanza VII he appears to regain his ‘shaping spirit of Imagination
106
Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality’s dark dream!
I turn from you, and listen to the wind,
Which long has raved unnoticed. (ll. 94-97)
Overcoming ‘Reality’s dark dream’ or ‘dull pain’, the poet now can interact with
an external world by noticing the power of ‘the wind’, which comes not from
within, but ‘without’. As Barth pointed out, the poet ‘had projected his own
feelings onto the wind – and so could hear only his own depression’ until stanza
VI.138 But he became aware of the wind which is sensory and external, and his
‘shaping spirit of Imagination’ began to mediate between the poet and nature,
telling ‘a tale of less affright, and tempered with delight’. In fact, it is not clear
whether it is the stimulus of an external nature, or the recovery of joy in
himself, that enables the poet to turn away from ‘viper thoughts’ and to feel
again the beauty of nature. Although it is difficult to define the source of the ‘A
tale of less affright’, it is clear that it originates with the interaction between
the mind and an external world.
In this respect, it is not fair to view the two famous lines simply as a
manifesto for the shift from empiricism to idealism. They need to be understood
in terms of the context of the process of poetic inspiration of which they only
form a part. As Andrew Keanie points out, the poem is ‘not primarily
Coleridge’s formal recognition of his inability to win ‘from outward forms [. . .]
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within’. Rather it suggests his
138
Barth, Coleridge and the Power of Love, p. 95.
107
awareness of the ubiquity of his melancholy in himself.139 Paradoxically, in spite
of this melancholy or ‘a grief without a pang’, Coleridge manages to ‘make his
negative emotions poetically viable’.140 One of the reasons for his capability is
that the poet’s declaration of the deadness of his poetic imagination ‘could not
disguise the apparent accuracy of the self-assessment’.141 In consequence, his
expression of the hope for regaining his poetic imagination through his
interaction with nature in Stanza I already presupposes the returning of the
power in Stanza VII. If we understand the poem as the process of retrieving his
genial spirits, rather than a shift from empiricism to idealism, it can be argued
that the famous two lines reflect partly the state of the poet’s failure to interact
with nature owing to melancholy, or depression, or ‘dull pain’.
If ‘The Eolian Harp’ is questioning whether the mind is dependent solely
upon sensory and external experience, ‘Dejection: An Ode’ is concerned with
whether nature has its own independent reality or it is just a projection of the
mind. Whereas the former is associated with empiricism, the latter is often dealt
with in the context of idealism. One of the tantalising issues in Coleridge is that
there is no clear boundary between empiricism and idealism, between nature
and the mind, in terms of the source for creating meanings. Strikingly, the poet
himself is aware of this tension, and his impressive letter to James Gillman in
1825 communicates spiritedly a battle between two rival artists, the Mind and
Nature:
139
Keanie, ‘Coleridge’s Capable Negativity’, p. 283.
J. C. C. Mays, ‘Coleridge’s Love: “All he can manage, more than he could”’, in Coleridge’s
Visionary Languages: Essays in Honour of J. B. Beer, ed. by Tim Fulford and Morton Paley
(Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), p. 58.
141
Stephen Gill, William Wordsworth: A Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 200.
140
108
In Youth and early Manhood the Mind and Nature are, as it were, two rival
Artists, both potent Magicians, and engaged, like the King's Daughter and
the rebel Genie in the Arabian Nights' Enternts., in sharp conflict of
Conjuration — each having for it's object to turn the other into Canvas to
paint on, Clay to mould, or Cabinet to contain. For a while the Mind seems
to have the better in the contest, and makes of Nature what it likes; takes
her Lichens and Weather-stains for Types & Printer's Ink and prints Maps
& Fac Similes of Arabic and Sanscrit Mss. on her rocks; composes
Country-Dances on her moon-shiny Ripples [. . .] But alas! alas! that
Nature is a wary wily long-breathed old Witch, tough-lived as a Turtle
and divisible as the Polyp, repullulative in a thousand Snips and Cuttings,
integra et in toto! She is sure to get the better of Lady MIND in the long
run, and to take her revenge too — transforms our To Day into a Canvass
dead-colored to receive the dull featureless Portrait of Yesterday [. . .]
she mocks the mind with it's own metaphors, metamorphosing the Memory
into a lignum vitae Escrutoire to keep unpaid Bills & Dun's Letters in, with
Outlines that had never been filled up.142
This is a wry account of how the poet has been struggling between the mind
and nature or between subject and object. His personal defeat sounds
pessimistic in that ‘the mind, having once been the master, has become the
slave’.
143
As Abrams put it, ‘Coleridge implicitly describes his having
succumbed, with the passage of time, to the actuality in his own experience of a
concept of the mind in perception against which his own philosophy of the
active, projective, and creative mind had been a sustained refutation.’ 144
Although this summary expresses ‘the stream of pessimism that all [some
essential shaping and organizing power] was lost’, John Beer points out how
142
143
144
CL V, pp. 497-498.
M.H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 459.
Ibid., p. 459.
109
Coleridge paradoxically describes this perpetual struggle ‘imaginatively’ and
how ‘his mind was ranging as vividly as before’.145
It is arguable whether Coleridge was able to integrate these two rival
artists finally into unity or became an idealist by abandoning empiricism. He
wrote to Thomas Poole in 1801: ‘If I do not greatly delude myself, I have not
only completely extricated the notions of Time, and Space; but have overthrown
the doctrine of Association, as taught by Hartley, and with it all the irreligious
metaphysics of modern Infidels — especially, the doctrine of Necessity.’146 This
passage has been taken by critics to suggest that Coleridge was enthusiastic
about Hartley for a few years but he later criticised his association theory for
its mechanical and materialistic aspects. 147 Thus in studies of Coleridge the
thought of Hartley is often regarded as the idea which influenced Coleridge for
a few years and then disappeared later.
What all this shows is that Coleridge never completely ceased to vacillate
between the mind and nature or between idealism and empiricism. What matters
in the middle of the tension is the significance of nature as a sensory
experience. Whether it is the primary or secondary cause creating meaning, the
poet associates the materiality of nature with the power of imagination.
Hartley’s theory of sensory experience still remains in his later years.148 Over
and against the idealistic perspective, Coleridge had to admit that he could not
avoid the feeling that the interpretation of nature was only a human
145
J. Beer, ‘The Paradoxes of Nature in Wordsworth and Coleridge’, Wordsworth Circle, 40
(2009), 4-9 (p. 9).
146
CL II, p. 707.
147
See, J. A. Appleyard, ‘Coleridge and Criticism: I. Critical Theory’, in S. T. Coleridge, ed. by R.
L. Brett (London: Bell, 1971), pp. 123-146 (p. 128).
148
See, David S. Miall, ‘“I See It Feelingly”: Coleridge’s Debt to Hartley’, in Coleridge’s Visionary
Languages, p. 151; Haven, ‘Coleridge, Hartley, and the Mystics’, pp. 480, 487.
110
perception.149 For him, that limitation, however, is not necessarily subject to a
chasm between human perception and external nature in the sense that the
materiality of nature matters even in his later years in terms of its relationship
with humanity and God.
3. A mutual relationship and a religious aspect in evolution
3.1. A mutual relationship in a passage from The Statesman’s Manual
From an ecotheological perspective, there is another problem in the
relationship between humankind and nature. Although the complex interactions
between them reveal the significance of nature as a physical reality, their
relationship still generates the unresolved tension of hierarchy with regard to
the issue of epistemology. According to Coleridge’s terms, there is the question
of who is the master between the two rival Artists. In addition, as pointed out
already, for Coleridge, in spite of the interrelatedness between man and the
noblest animals of the brute creation, there is a wide chasm between them in
his idea of evolution to the extent that the human body is the crown and
summation of the evolution. We cannot deny the impression that the thought of
Coleridge assumes the superiority of humankind over nature, but it can be
asserted that he understands their relationship not in terms of dominance, but in
a reciprocal and mutual way. Besides, in this section, it will be seen that
Coleridge’s attempt to find the unity of the universe through the scientific and
149
In fact, Coleridge himself refers to the inevitable intervention of the mind, in his Philosophical
Lectures: ‘[. . .] the human understanding itself is but an individuality in nature, having its own
peculiar organization, and modifying all objects, even its own form of self-consciousness, no less
than the forms seen as external, by its own peculiar appropriate perspective’, p. 373. Quoted by
Nicholas Meihuizen, ‘Coleridge: Polarity, Circles, Spirals and the Quest for Being’, English Studies
in Africa, 34(1991), 13-20 (p. 16).
111
philosophical ideas of the process of evolution is essentially associated with his
religious thought.
If we look at a passage from The Statesman’s Manual, it will be noted that
Coleridge is aware of the problem of domination in the relationship between
humankind and nature, but at the same time he attempts to establish a
reciprocal and mutual relationship between them within the context of his
religious ideas:
I seem to myself to behold in the quiet objects, on which I am gazing,
more than an arbitrary illustration, more than a mere simile, the work of
my own Fancy. I feel an awe, as if there were before my eyes the same
Power as that of the Reason – the same power in a lower dignity, and
therefore a symbol established in the truth of things. I feel it alike,
whether I contemplate a single tree or flower, or meditate on vegetation
throughout the world, as one of the great organs of the life of nature. Lo!with the rising sun it commences its outward life and enters into open
communion with all the elements, at once assimilating them to itself and to
each other [. . .] in incorporating the one extreme becomes the symbol of
the other; the natural symbol of that higher life of reason, in which the
whole series (known to us in our present state of being) is perfected, in
which, therefore, all the subordinate gradations recur, and are reordained
“in more abundant honour”. We had seen each in its own cast, and we now
recognise them all as co-existing in the unity of a higher form, the Crown
and Completion of the Earthly, and the Mediator of a new and heavenly
series. Thus finally, the vegetable creation, in the simplicity and
uniformity of its internal structure symbolising the unity of nature, while it
represents the omniformity of her delegated functions in its external
variety and manifoldness, becomes the record and chronicle of her
ministerial acts, and inchases the vast unfolded volume of the earth with
the hieroglyphics of her history.150
150
SM, p. 72-73.
112
Most of all, Coleridge clearly articulates an idea of the organic relationship of
the whole universe in the sense that all the elements of the universe hold
communion with one another. Rejecting a mechanistic view of nature and the
mind, the poet constructs a vision of the communion through the interaction
between ‘the creative powers of the mind and the powers of growth in organic
nature’. 151 Yet, this vision implies the issue of superiority and inferiority as
each part of the universe is regarded as inferior or superior to other parts. The
phrases, ‘in a lower dignity’, ‘higher life of reason’, ‘subordinate gradations’,
indicate implicitly that Coleridge himself is aware of a hierarchical system of
the universe, but he tries to overcome the sense of hierarchy not by destroying
it, but by looking at it from another perspective.
In particular, attention should be paid to the phrase, ‘in more abundant
honour’, which implies the significance of ‘all the subordinate gradations’. The
phrase is a quotation from 1 Corinthians 12:24, and St. Paul, in this chapter,
argues that our body consists of many members; all the members make one
body; and at the same time, ‘God has so arranged the body, giving the greater
honour to the inferior member.’152 The implication is that the inferior members
of the body are given their own unique value by God, and therefore the different
members of the body maintain a reciprocal relationship rather than the
relationship of dominance. Interestingly, Coleridge uses this quotation in
articulating the relationship of the universe. For him, man as the completion of
the progressive evolution is a higher form, but this idea of superiority does not
151
Jibon Krishna Banerjee, The Dramatic Works of Wordsworth, Coleridge And Southey (New
Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 1994), p. 74.
152
1 Corinthians 12. 24.
113
presuppose man’s dominance over nature. As the inferior member of the body is
given the great honour by God, so is nature re-ordained ‘in more abundant
honour’ by the divinity. 153 Although humanity is regarded as superior to the
non-human natural world in some senses, the relationship between them is
characterised not by dominance, but by reciprocality and mutuality in terms of
the dynamics of communion and re-ordination ‘in more abundant honour’.
This reciprocal and mutual relationship is also based on the one-and-many
theory of the one life described in the first section of this chapter. 154 The
universe expresses a sense of unity through the divine presence which is
ubiquitous, but this ‘one Life’ does not diminish the being of each part of the
universe. Rather each of them maintains its own unique being. Concerning the
relationship between humanity and nature in the one life, Coleridge holds that
‘Nature has her proper interest’.155 Seamus Perry translates this idea into these
terms: ‘natural objects in their own right have the noblest of callings, for they
are, in a most literal way, and while remaining entirely themselves, living
evidences of God’. 156 As a result, the notion of the one life represents a
reciprocal and mutual relationship. Coleridge asserts a similar idea in the last
part of The Ancient Mariner:
He prayeth well, who loveth well
153
Douglas Brownlow Wilson argues that nature, for Coleridge, is a potential source of
sacramental vision, ‘Two Modes of Apprehending Nature: A Gloss on the Coleridgean Symbol’,
PMLA, 87 (1972), 42-52 (p. 42); James Boulger also suggests that, in spite of his later
semidualism between matter and spirit, Coleridge's sacramental implication was a lingering issue
even in his old age; Coleridge as Religious Thinker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), pp.
143-195.
154
CL II, p. 866.
155
CL II, p. 864.
156
Perry, Coleridge and the Uses of Division, p. 78.
114
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
(ll. 612-617)
The mariner experienced a sense of aloneness by being isolated from his
community and God, and he shows that he could reestablish the broken
relationship through the power of love. Interpreting his experience according to
the language of Christianity and the society to which the Wedding Guest
belongs, the Mariner provides a final summarizing moral.157 When we look at
the two phrases, ‘Both man and bird and beast’ and ‘All things both great and
small’, it is clear that Coleridge makes a distinction between humankind and the
non-human natural world in terms of superiority and inferiority. But, at the
same time, he attempts to establish a reciprocal relationship between them,
rather than a relationship of separation and dominance, through the power of
love. Although the universe consists of different parts, both ‘great and small’,
each of them has its own intrinsic value which is based on the power of God’s
love. Because of that, in spite of the distinctions of superiority and inferiority,
they are able to develop a mutual and reciprocal relationship. For Coleridge, the
possibility of such love is opened up by his religious faith, God ‘made and loveth
157
As Perry argues that the summary ‘makes a good point in an unkind way’, Ibid., p. 284, the
summarizing moral has its own controversial points (Coleridge and the Uses of Division, p. 284).
It can be said that the poem ‘has as its centre the affirmation of a redemptive ideal and
philosophic truth’, but, nevertheless, this does not mean that ‘it can be read as a coherent
allegorical presentation of the ideas of sin, penance, and redemption, or as the poetic declaration
of a particular view of the world and man’s place in it’, see Vincent Newey, ‘Indeterminacy in
Coleridge’s The Ancient Mariner’, Aligarh Critical Miscellany 5 (1992), 167-180 (p. 176). Thus
his summarizing moral is unlikely to be a determinate conclusion to the interpretation of his
experience.
115
all’. Whereas the creation is characterised by variety, sometimes carrying with
divisions of superiority and inferiority, the intrinsic value of each part of
creation does not spring from that differentiation, but from the power of love.
3.2. Martin Buber’s idea of I-Thou
Martin Buber’s work is a help to understand what Coleridge seems to be
getting at. In his best-known book, I and Thou (1923), Buber offers two
different ways of understanding the dynamic of relationship, I-Thou and I-It.
The former is remarkably similar to Coleridge’s understanding of love between
humanity and nature. For Buber, the world is twofold in terms of man’s attitude
and basic words, and the basic words consist of a pair, ‘one basic word is the
word pair I-Thou. The other basic word is the word pair I-It.’158 As ‘in the
beginning is the relation’, the essential dynamics of the basic words is that of
relation.159 The I-Thou relation establishes a reciprocal relationship, whilst the
I-It relation rejects the reciprocal dynamic. In the former, ‘my Thou acts on me
as I act on it’, and therefore ‘he (thou) is no thing among things nor does he
(thou) consist of things.’160 In the latter, the I ‘is not bodily confronted by a You
but surrounded by a multitude of contents’, and, as a result, ‘the relationship is
permeated by means.’ The Thou becomes ‘an object among objects, possibly
the noblest one and yet one of them, assigned its measure and boundary’.161
His concept of two types of relation is involved in two levels, between God
and man, and between man and man. If the one is ‘essentially an epistemological
158
159
160
161
Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Scribner, 1970), p. 53.
Ibid., p. 69.
Ibid., pp. 59, 67.
Ibid., pp. 63, 68.
116
issue dealing with the peculiar ways in which God is known’, the other is
‘mainly an ethical question regarding the proper way to act toward other human
beings’.162 The I-Thou relation as a way of knowing is concerned with mystical
knowledge about God, and as a moral way it shows how other people need to be
treated in the world. Particularly, the ethical level of the distinction between IThou and I-It is important in assessing how the modern world encourages
humans to treat others as objects and instruments to be exploited and used
within the context of technological progress. If ‘I-Thou relation refers to an
intimate, caring relation which accepts another person for what he is’, ‘I-It
relation refers mainly to the inevitable use of objects and persons for private,
selfish purposes.’163
Interestingly, Buber’s idea of the two different types of relation reflects on
the different relations between the human and nature. In other words, the
dynamics of the I-Thou and I-It relationships can be applied to the relationship
between the human and nature. It has often been pointed out that the
anthropocentric Western view of nature established a dualism of man and
nature, and saw nature as existing only to serve human ends. Further, the
domination and exploitation of nature has been accelerated by the progress of
science and technology. This kind of relationship between the human and nature
can be described by the I-It relation in that the I-It is ‘a world where there are
objects to be used by the I, observed by the I [. . .] the I stands unrelated to the
It, as a user [. . .] not being personally or subjectively involved’.164 In addition,
162
Stuart Charme, ‘The Two I-Thou Relations in Martin Buber’s Philosophy’, The Harvard
Theological Review, 70 (1977), 161-173 (p. 162).
163
164
Ibid., p. 163.
Lloyd Geering, The World of Relation: an Introduction to Martin Buber ’s I and Thou
117
the I-It world, as Buber points out, ‘induces man to consider the It-world as the
world in which one has to live and also can live comfortably – and that even
offers us all sorts of stimulations and excitements, activities and knowledge’.165
Nature in the I-It relation only exists for human needs.
From the I-Thou’s point of view, nature is no longer treated as an object or
instrument with purely functional value, but is regarded as a whole and as a
unity with its own independent intrinsic values. As the I-Thou relationship is
reciprocal, there is an interactive relationship between the human and nature,
not in an exploitative and dominant sense, but in a caring and organic sense.
Likewise, Coleridge’s understanding of the relationship between humanity and
nature signifies the I-Thou relation as it refers to the interconnectedness of
humanity and nature, based on love and reciprocity, rather than dominance.
3.3. A religious aspect in imagination and symbol
We have discussed that the power of divine love plays a key role in
overcoming a hierarchical relationship between humankind and nature in
Coleridge’s scientific and philosophical notion of the inter-relatedness of the
universe. Yet, another question arises from the perspective of ecotheology
whether the notion represents the idea of the divinity. In order to examine that
question, I shall return to the passage quoted above from The Statesman’s
Manual, in which the presence of God can be revealed in the interactions
between the elements of the universe through the powers of imagination and
symbol.
(Wellington: Victoria UP, 1983), p. 21.
165
Buber, I and Thou, p. 84.
118
According to the passage, all the elements of the universe are not only in
communion with one another, but also interact with one another through the
dynamic of symbol in that ‘the one extreme becomes the symbol of the other’.
In order to perceive the dynamic of the symbol in the universe, we need to
understand Coleridge’s idea of imagination. Coleridge’s understanding of
imagination has been subject to a very great deal of critical discussion, but here
the main focus will be on its religious implications. Coleridge’s idea of
imagination is basically religious in the sense that it is concerned with the sense
of transcendence and the knowledge of God.166 In Chapter XIII of Biographia
Literaria, the famous definition of ‘The primary IMAGINATION’ describes the
transcendental power of the imagination as ‘the living Power and prime Agent
of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act
of creation in the infinite I AM’. 167 Elsewhere, Coleridge also called the
imagination ‘a dim analogue of Creation, not all that we can believe but all that
we can conceive of creation’.168 For him, the power of imagination enables the
human mind to participate in the activity of the divine mind.169 As the human
mind can be associated with the I AM through the imagination, Coleridge claims
that the imagination enables the mind to experience a sense of transcendence.
When we look at its relationship with reason, the religious implication of
imagination will be clearer. The human understanding has two distinct organs,
166
See, James Volant Baker, The Sacred River; Coleridge’s Theory of the Imagination (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957), p. 213; Daniel M. McVeigh, ‘Coleridge’s Doctrine
of the Imagination and the Enigmatic Name of God’, Religion and Literature, 17 (1985), 61-75
(p.3).
167
BL I, p. 304.
168
CL II, pp. 1033-34; McVeigh, ‘Coleridge’s Doctrine of the Imagination’, p.3
169
Christine Gallant, Coleridge’s Theory of Imagination Today (New York: AMS Press, 1989),
p.4; Barth, The Symbolic Imagination, p. 155.
119
‘the outward sense, and the mind’s eye’. Reason is this mind’s eye, ‘an organ of
inward sense’.170 Reason also needs to be mediated by imagination because the
latter is completed by the former, which has the power of clearness, depth, and
understanding.171 Reason impregnated with the imagination becomes ‘intuitive,
and a living power’.172 Thus reason contains the imagination within itself, and
the former needs to be mediated by the latter. The power of imagination,
exerted by reason, is deeply religious in that reason is the highest human power,
the breath of the power of God, a pure influence from the glory of the
Almighty.173 God, the soul, and eternal truth are the objects of reason, but at
the same time we name ‘God the Supreme Reason’. 174 Accordingly, the
transcendental power of imagination itself is fundamentally involved in the
Supreme Being.
This power of imagination is a cognitive power through which we are able
to recognise not what is there, but what is not there.175 Coleridge also applies
the dynamic of polarity to the cognitive power of imagination. In Chapter XIV of
Biographia Literaria, he suggests that the power of imagination ‘reveals itself in
the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness,
with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the
individual, with the representative’. 176 In a polar unity, two distinct realities
neither oppose nor separate from each other, and therefore this dynamic of
170
171
Friend I, pp. 155-159.
SM, pp. 69-70.
172
Ibid, pp. 69-70.
Gallant, Coleridge’s Theory of Imagination Today, p. 5.
174
Grosvenor Powell, ‘Coleridge’s “Imagination” and the Infinite Regress of Consciousness’, ELH,
39 (1972), 266-278 (p. 269).
175
Gallant, Coleridge’s Theory of Imagination Today, p.5; McVeigh, ‘Coleridge’s Doctrine of the
Imagination’, p. 7.
176
BL II, p. 16-17.
173
120
polarity in imagination provides the perception of the connectedness between
human and divine. As Cutsinger put it, Coleridge had glimpsed ‘a world
translucent to deity’ through the polar unity of imagination.177 Accordingly, the
cognitive power of imagination, opening our eyes to the revision of immanence
and transcendence, the reality of the self and the reality of God, compels us to
see the divine reality which permeates the universe.
Likewise, the beginning of the quoted passage implies that for Coleridge the
power of imagination enables the poet to see beyond ‘the quiet objects’.
Although he is ‘gazing on’ ‘a single tree or flower’, he can perceive something
more than that which brings about a sense of ‘an awe’, which is more than the
work of his Fancy but is based on ‘the Reason’, the Supreme Reason. In this
respect, the natural world is regarded not just as material reality but also as an
idea, contemplated by the power of imagination. For Coleridge, there is unity
between nature and an idea in that ideas are ‘CONSTITUTIVE, and one with the
power and Life of Nature’.178 As ‘an idea, in the highest sense of that word,
cannot be conveyed but by a symbol’, the natural world as an idea is able to
interact with others by becoming a symbol.179 Coleridge argues that the one
becomes the symbol of the other ‘in incorporating’, and therefore the natural
world becomes the symbol of human reason. It must also be noted that human
reason as ‘a higher form’ is ‘the Crown and Completion of the Earthly, and the
Mediator of a new and heavenly series’. In other words, the human reason as
the Mediator ‘is in its turn a symbol of that divine Reason, the Logos, which is
177
Cutsinger, ‘Coleridgean Polarity and Theological Vision’, p. 93.
James Vigus, Platonic Coleridge (London: Legenda, 2009), p. 47; SM (Appendix E), pp. 113114.
179
BL I, p. 156.
178
121
the life and the light of men’.180 Coleridge names ‘God the Supreme Reason’.181
Accordingly, the natural world as a symbol of human reason participates in the
reality of humanity, and human beings as a symbol of the Supreme Reason take
part in the reality of the divinity. The quoted passage maintains that all are ‘coexisting in the unity of a higher form’. As a result, what the poet feels is ‘the
same Power as that of the Reason- the same power in a lower dignity, and
therefore a symbol established in the truth of things’. The implication is that
humanity and the natural world are in communion with each other by sharing in
the reality of the Divinity through the power of the symbols.
Here it might seem necessary to clarify further the idea of symbol in order
to show that the vision, conveyed by the contemplation of the mind and dynamic
of the symbols, displays an ontological sense as well as an epistemological
sense. As Catherine Wallace suggests, ‘symbols communicate ideas more
adequately than discursive logical formulations, because a symbol holds
together the contradictions that logic can only break apart.’ 182 Symbols can
approach what is beyond our senses. Further, a symbol, for Coleridge, is not a
metaphor or allegory or any other figure of speech or form of fancy, but an
actual and essential part of that, the whole of which it represents, and therefore
‘it always partakes of the Reality which it renders intelligible.’183 In other words,
the one is able not only to represent but also to participate in the reality of the
other by becoming the symbol of the other. Therefore a symbol is interrelated
180
M. H. Abrams, The Correspondent Breeze: Essays on English Romanticism (New York: Norton,
1984), p. 221.
181
Friend I, p. 156.
182
Gallant, Coleridge’s Theory of Imagination Today, pp. 7-8
183
SM, p. 30.
122
with what it symbolises in an ontological sense as well as an epistemological
sense.
3.4. Symbol and sacrament in nature
Accordingly, if the natural world becomes the symbol of humanity, it can be
‘a natural home for humanity’s ultimate identity’ through the dynamic of
symbols.184 The natural world, contemplated by the power of the imagination, is
not just a physical reality, but also ‘prophetic of history, of the moral and
religious life of human beings’. 185 In consequence, the human mind becomes
‘the hermeneutical key to nature’ and ‘discloses it as a system of identifications’
in a sense that ‘all the subordinate gradations recur and are reordained in more
abundant honour’ in the human mind. 186 In addition, nature ‘provides the
symbolism with a language for the divine’ because the ‘Power’ of ‘the Reason’
can be found ‘in a lower dignity’ as well as in a ‘higher life’.187 In this respect,
the power of symbols enables the universe to represent the idea of communion
within the sense of the divinity. Even all elements are ‘perfected’ ‘in the natural
symbol of that higher life of reason’.
In addition to the dynamic of symbol, the sacramental language of the
passage also suggests how the natural world is permeated by the presence of
God and participates in the reality of the Divinity. Some phrases in the passage
refer to sacramental implications, for example, ‘communion’, ‘re-ordained’ and
184
Alan P. R. Gregory, Coleridge and the Conservative Imagination (Macon, Georgia: Mercer
185
Ibid., p. 240.
186
Ibid., p. 240.
187
Ibid., p. 240.
123
‘ministerial acts’. For Coleridge, the sun appears to be ‘the traditional metaphor
for God’s power, the source of growth and self-realisation’.188 He mentions that
‘Man knows God only by revelation from God – as we see the Sun by his own
Light’.189 Further, in the Statesman’s Manual, from which the passage is quoted,
Coleridge claims that ‘the natural sun is a symbol of the spiritual’. 190 When
‘with the rising sun’ nature enters into ‘open communion with all the elements’,
it is shown that the communion of the whole universe is sacred in the light of
the rising sun, which symbolises the power of God. At the same time, in the
sacredness of the communion, ‘all the subordinate gradations are reordained’
‘in more abundant honor’. We have already seen the significance of this phrase
in terms of the I-Thou relationship between humanity and the non-human
natural world. Here the focus must be on the word, ‘reordained’. This term
expresses definitely the sense of a sacrament in that the act of ordination
embodies God’s act in relation to the creation. When the nature is reordained in
‘more abundant honour’, the act of reordination refers to the establishment of
the relationship between God and the creation. The prefix ‘re’ is worth noting.
The nature was already ordained through the creation of God, but Coleridge
seems to emphasise its sacredness by regarding it as being ordained again.
Interestingly, Coleridge even describes nature as performing an act of
ministry associated with the idea of sacrament. In the passage quoted from The
Statesman’s Manual, he propounds the idea that ‘the vegetable creation
becomes the record and chronicle of her ministerial acts’. If nature is in
188
189
190
Kessler, Coleridge’s Metaphors of Being, p. 104.
CN I, 209; Kessler, Coleridge’s Metaphors of Being, p. 104.
SM, p. 10.
124
communion with itself in terms of the rising sun and is reordained, her
‘ministerial acts’ alludes to the sense of sacrament. The natural world, for
Coleridge, is conceived not just as a natural phenomenon, but also as the act of
sacrament in relation to its sacredness. The idea of sacrament is usually linked
with humanity, but Coleridge clearly applies it to nature in this passage. It is not
inappropriate to relate nature with the sense of sacrament. When we regard all
of creation as sacred, we ‘must necessarily think of the Earth with the kind of
reverence that we would accord a lower case sacrament because by sacrament
is meant a sign pointing to God’s action in our lives’.191 Accordingly, the nonhuman natural world, for Coleridge, communicates the idea of sacrament.
4. The problem of pantheism
4.1. Coleridge’s struggle with pantheism
When ecotheology attempts to express the oneness and sacredness of the
universe through the immanence of God, it has to face the problem of pantheism.
Whereas, traditionally, theology has stressed the transcendence of God as an
Absolute Other, ecotheology tries to articulate the immanence of God in the
universe, which sometimes blurs the distinction between the finite and the
infinite. It is crucial for ecotheology to maintain both the immanence and the
transcendence of God. Likewise, pantheism had become a thorny issue for
Coleridge even from his early years in the sense that he often struggled with
the tension between pantheism and Christian orthodoxy. As McFarland mentions
191
James W. Skehan, ‘Exploring Teilhard’s “New Mysticism”: Building the Cosmos’, in Pierre
2006),
pp. 13-36 (p. 33).
125
that ‘it is almost as though literary commentators have entered a kind of silent
conspiracy never to challenge one another as to the exact meaning of these
ideas [pantheism], or to the appropriateness of their invocation’, it is hard to
define the meaning of pantheism.192 For example, pantheism means that ‘every
single thing is divine’, or it denotes that ‘it is the Whole, the unitary All, that is
the only God’.193 First of all, the problem of pantheism in Coleridge appears to
originate in his involvement with the thoughts of Priestley and Spinoza.
In a letter to John Thelwall in 1797, he expresses a desire for a kind of
totality through a universally transforming power:
I can at times feel strongly the beauties, you describe, in themselves, &
for themselves – but more frequently all things appear little – all the
knowledge, that can be acquired, child’s play – the universe itself – what
but an immense heap of little things? – I can contemplate nothing but parts,
& parts are all little - ! – My mind feels as if it ached to behold & know
something great – something one & indivisible – and it is only in the faith
of this that rocks or waterfalls, mountains or caverns give me the sense of
sublimity or majesty! – But in this faith all things counterfeit infinity!194
This passage explicitly indicates that Coleridge is eager to discover the
oneness in various parts. Presupposing the power of ‘one and indivisible’, the
poet is able to feel ‘the sense of sublimity or majesty’ in nature. In addition, ‘all
things’ appear to represent ‘infinity’ through the power. Accordingly, for him,
nature is more than a mere object. In the second section, it was seen that
192
Thomas McFarland, Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p.
127.
193
Stephen R. L. Clark, ‘Pantheism’, in Spirit of the Environment: Religion, Value and
Environmental Concern, ed. by David E. Cooper and Joy Palmer (London: Routledge, 1998), pp.
42-55 (p. 42).
194
CL I, p. 350.
126
Coleridge describes nature as the place of divine presence by focusing on the
immanence of God, rather than the Absolute Otherness: ‘the Universal Soul’,
‘the Soul of each, and God of all’ in ‘The Eolian Harp’, ‘God its Identity: God all
in all!’ in Religious Musings, ‘All-conscious Presence of the Universe!’ in The
Destiny of Nations. In this respect, nature is not just a physical natural world,
but becomes more than a mere object through its close association with divine
presence.
The sense of divine presence empowers nature to be animated and active.
In The Destiny of Nations, God is pronounced as ‘Nature’s vast ever-acting
Energy! [. . .] Impulse of All to All!’, and He becomes ‘Plastic and vast, one
intellectual breeze’ which ‘animates nature’ in ‘The Eolian Harp’. The idea of
active and animated nature is also prevalent in other Conversation Poems. In
‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’, the poet imagines that his friends ‘wander
on / In gladness all’ in nature, but he describes in a touching way how ‘my
gentle-hearted Charles’ may be ‘most glad’ in this beautiful landscape in a
sense that he:
[. . . ] hast pined
And hunger’d after Nature, many a year,
In the great City pent, winning thy way
With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain
And strange calamity! (ll. 27-32)
Further, the poet shows that ‘my friend struck with deep joy’ experiences a
spirit as well as solace in nature:
127
[he] gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; and of such hues
As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes
Spirits perceive his presence. (ll. 40-43)
Intriguingly, the poet provides a more detailed description of this passage in his
earlier version of the poem:
[. . .] gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily, a living thing
Which acts upon the mind—and with such hues
As cloath the Almighty Spirit, when he makes
Spirits perceive his presence. (from Annual Anthology)195
In this earlier text, all nature is explicitly conceived as ‘a living thing’ that, ‘in
the manner of God’, ‘acts upon the [human] mind’ –‘a statement that can be
read as compatible with the ‘animated nature’ and ‘intellectual breeze’ in “The
Eolian Harp”’.196 And it is the presence of ‘the Almighty Spirit’ that makes all
nature ‘a living thing’. In a similar vein, in ‘The Nightingale’, the moon, emerging
from behind a cloud, ‘awakens earth and sky / With one sensation, and those
wakeful birds / Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy, / As if some sudden
gale had swept at once / A hundred airy harps!’. (l, 78-82). Like ‘intellectual
breeze’, ‘the moon’ appears to animate all nature.
The idea of God as ‘the Universal Soul’ and ‘intellectual breeze’, which is
resonant with the thoughts of Priestley and Spinoza, appears to cause the
195
Quoted in Jack Stillinger, Coleridge and Textual Instability: The Multiple Versions of the Major
Poems (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 51.
196
Ibid., p, 52.
128
problem of pantheism. As the creation is identified with God in the dynamic of
energy in Priestley and the idea of substance in Spinoza, Coleridge conveys the
impression of the identification of God and the universe in the intimate
relationship between God and nature, in which nature becomes animated.
Modiano points out that this ‘metaphoric equivalence established between God
and nature via the unifying “intellectual breeze”’ inevitably made Coleridge
liable to ‘the stigma of pantheism’.197 In fact, Coleridge himself became fully
aware of the problem of pantheism in the thoughts of Priestley and Spinoza.
In a letter to John Edwards in 1796, Coleridge argues: ‘how is it that Dr
Priestley is not an atheist? – He asserts in three different Places, that God not
only does, but is, everything – But if God be every Thing, every Thing is God : which is all, the Atheists assert.’198 A year later Coleridge wrote in his note
that ‘Unitarian/travelling from Orthodoxy to Atheism’.199 In addition, Coleridge
shows an ambivalent attitude towards Spinoza.200 He describes Spinozism as a
skeleton in a number of places: ‘Spinoza’s is the only true philosophy; but it is
the Skeleton of the Truth, to scare & disgust – and an imperfect Skeleton,
moreover.’201 On the one hand, he praises the philosophy of Spinoza. On the
197
Modiano, Coleridge and the Concept of Nature, p. 58; see also, Barry, ‘Coleridge the
Revisionary’, p. 604; Berkeley, Coleridge and the Crisis of Reason, pp. 3-4.
198
CL I, p. 193.
199
CN I, 80. Here it is suggested that this entry is dated [? April-May 1797].
200
In Henry Crabb Robinson’s famous anecdote: ‘Coleridge walked with me to A. Robinson’s for
my Spinoza, which I lent him. While standing in the room he kissed Spinoza’s face in the titlepage, and said, “This book is a gospel to me.” But in less than a minute he added, “his philosophy
is nevertheless false”’, Robinson I: 399-401. Entry for October 3, 1812. Quoted in Berkeley,
Coleridge and the Crisis of Reason, p. 42.
201
A marginal note on The Friend, See Wordsworth, ‘Some Unpublished Coleridge Marginalia’, p.
369; also, ‘Spinoza’s System is to mine just what a Skeleton is to a Body, fearful because it is
only the Skeleton’, CL IV, p. 775; ‘Spinosism with all it’s Skeleton unfleshed, bare Bones and
Eye-holes, as presented by Spinoza himself’, CL IV, p. 548; referring to a passage from
Schelling’s Jahrbücher der Medicin, Coleridge mentions that ‘This is the Basis of the Schellingian
Atheism [. . .] or the cloathed Skeleton of Spinoza!’, ‘Jahrbücher der Medicin’ in CM III, pp. 114-
129
other hand, he rejects it. Richard Berkeley explains this dual attitude to Spinoza
in terms of the crisis between reason and faith. He claims that Coleridge’s
binary view of Spinoza is an attempt at ‘establishing a pattern of trying to
reconcile Spinoza’s reason with his own faith’.202 Coleridge refers to the clash
between reason and faith in Biographia Literaria: ‘For a very long time indeed I
could not reconcile personality with infinity; and my head was with Spinoza,
though my whole heart remained with Paul and John.’203
Coleridge’s fundamental dilemma over the idea of God lies in the tension
between the immanence and the transcendence of God. He wants to conceive
God as being present in the universe, but at the same time he tries to be loyal
to the Christian orthodox idea of God as Absolute Otherness. In fact, this ongoing struggle reveals a significant aspect about the continuity and discontinuity
of Coleridge’s thinking about religion and philosophy. At the beginning of the
chapter, it was mentioned that his interest in Unitarianism and Hartley’s
associationism later shifted to orthodoxy Christianity and natural philosophy,
but he never entirely overcame the tensions implicit in this shift. His primary
concern to conceive the universe as a whole remained a crucial part of
Coleridge’s thinking, and it is, for Coleridge, a divine presence that empowers
the universe to attain a sense of unity. As a result, he remained reluctant simply
to discard the pantheistic ideas of God he had found in Priestley and Spinoza.
4.2. The pantheist controversy in Germany
131 (pp. 122-123); ‘Schelling’s thought is an attempt to clothe the skeleton of Spinozism’, OM, p.
205.
202
Berkeley, Coleridge and the Crisis of Reason, p. 463.
203
BL I, p. 201.
130
In order to examine the process of how Coleridge tries to overcome the
problem of pantheism, it seems that we need to understand the historical and
intellectual contexts of pantheism during early German Romanticism with which
Coleridge was familiar. As has been acknowledged, there were three crucial
intellectual happenings of the 1780s, which contributed considerably to the
formation of the so-called German Romantic circle in 1790s; the breakout of the
pantheist controversy (Pantheismusstreit), the instant enthusiasm for Immanuel
Kant’s critical philosophy, and the transforming power of the French
Revolution.
204
Especially,
reference
should
be
made
to
the
pantheist
controversy, which is considered as a springboard leading to German
Romanticism. Friedrich Jacobi had a conversation with Lessing in 1780 and was
convinced that he was a clear Spinozist in his last days: Jacobi: ‘You [Lessing]
surprised me [. . . ] there is nothing that I would have suspected less, than to
find a Spinozist or a pantheist in you. And you blurted it out to me so suddenly.
In the main I had come to get help from you against Spinoza.’205 Jacobi sent a
private letter to Moses Mendelssohn with a long account of his conversation
with Lessing. Disagreeing with Jacobi’s thought on Lessing and Spinoza,
Mendelssohn published Morgenstunden, or Lectures on the Existence of God in
1785, in which he tries to justify their philosophy as ‘a morally and religiously
acceptable purified pantheism (gelauterter
Pantheismus)’ which can be
204
See, Julia A. Lamm, ‘Romanticism and Pantheism,’ in The Blackwell Companion to the
Nineteenth Century Theology, ed. by David Fergusson (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp.
165-186 (p. 166).
205
In 1780, ‘my trip [Jacobi’s] took place, and on the fifth of July, in the afternoon, I held Lessing
in my arms for the first time. On that very same day we talked about many things; and about
individuals, moral and immoral, atheist, theist and Christian,’ F. Jacobi, Concerning the Doctrine of
Spinoza (1785), in The Main Philosophical Writings And The Novel Allwill: Friedrich Heinrich
Jacobi, trans. by George di Giovanni, pp. 173-251 (p. 185); Jacobi, Concerning the Doctrine of
Spinoza, p. 187.
131
‘consistent with any positive religion’: ‘Lessing envisaged pantheism in the
totally refined manner I have scribed to him: in complete harmony with
whatever has a bearing on life and happiness; indeed, that he was on his way to
link pantheistic concepts even with positive religion.’ 206 As an immediate
counter to it, Jacobi published On the Doctrine of Spinoza which is a collection
of his talks with Lessing and his idea on Spinoza. Jacobi conceives Spinozism as
‘atheism’ in the sense that, according to Spinoza’s principles, ‘outside thinking
finite things
there cannot be
yet another particular infinite will
and
understanding, together with a particular infinite absolute thought’.207 In other
words, for Jacobi, Spinoza’s idea of God is not God at all because He has
neither will nor intellect which is infinite and unconditioned, but He is only an
immanent God.
Interestingly, this pantheist controversy ‘proved an epoch-marking event,
for it brought into the open the underground current of Spinozist sympathy,
where it rapidly revealed itself as having swollen to a Romantic tide’. 208 A
number of [early] Romantics responded enthusiastically to the controversy,
Herder, Schleiermacher, Schlegel, Novalis, Schelling. One of the reasons they
were fascinated with it is their aim to find the unity of the universe, for example,
in terms of the relationship between the world and God, the finite and the
infinite, over and against dualism. Jacobi observes that ‘whenever Lessing
wanted to represent a personal Divinity, he thought of it as the soul of the All;
206
McFarland, Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition, p. 81; Moses Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden,
in The Spinoza Conversations between Lessing and Jacobi: Text with Excerpts from the Ensuing
Controversy, tran. by G. Vallee, J. B. Lawson and C. G. Chapple, pp. 64-77 (p. 77).
207
Jacobi, Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza, p. 233; Ibid., pp. 221-2.
208
McFarland, Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition, p. 82.
132
and he thought the Whole after the analogy of an organic body’. 209 Lessing
himself says to Jacobi, ‘the orthodox concepts of the Divinity are no longer for
me; I cannot stomach them. Hen kai pan! I know of nothing else [. . .] I have
come to talk to you about my hen kai pan.’210 This phrase means ‘one and all’
which, according to Lessing, was the inscription on a temple of the ancients.211
Likewise, the Romantics were definitely willing to discover their own hen kai
pan. Although the Romantics attempted to formulate the notion of the unity by
linking the finite with the infinite through Spinozism, they were caught in a
thorny dilemma between the atheism – the pantheism of Spinozism - and the
Absolute Otherness of orthodoxy Christianity. If they follow the idea of
substance in Spinoza, they can attain the wholeness of the universe but cannot
avoid the criticism of pantheism and atheism. By contrast, orthodox Christianity
is often subject to the dualism between the finite and the infinite. In order to
find a way of holding together both the finite and the infinite without obscuring
the boundary between them, they developed a natural philosophy in which they
were able to attain the unity but at the same time to maintain the distinction.
Now I shall contextualise the dynamic in terms of the relationship between God
and the world in German Romanticism.
4.3. Kant’s transcendental idealism
The rise of the natural philosophy which had a considerable impact on
Coleridge in his later period is related closely to the development of
209
210
211
Jacobi, Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza, 196.
Ibid., p. 187.
Ibid., pp. 187, 594.
133
transcendentalist thought in Germany that started with the works of Immanuel
Kant.212 There is no need to underline the significance of Kant’s philosophy in
the German Romantics in that the latter spurred on by and grew out of the
former. 213 Mentioning the visionary idealism of Berkeley and the skeptical
idealism of Descartes, Kant describes his idea of idealism as ‘transcendental
idealism’.214 For the former two tendencies in idealism, the reality of external
objects is doubted or regarded as a merely imaginary entity. Kant, however,
opens up the possibility of external reality through the supposition of outer
experience: ‘All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure
reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth.’215
For him, the idea of experience is not purely empirical, but is associated with
the idea of the transcendental. He ‘calls all cognition transcendental that is
occupied not so much with objects but with our manner of cognition of objects
insofar as this is to be possible a priori.’216 The transcendental ‘would concern
the origin of our cognitions of objects insofar as that cannot be ascribed to the
objects’.217 Thus the transcendental is not concerned with objects themselves,
but with how to know them. When Kant refers to the possibility of truth ‘only in
212
Raimonda Modiano, Coleridge and the Concept of Nature (London: Macmillan, 1985), p. 151.
Vinod Lakshmipathy, ‘Kant and the Turn to Romanticism’, KRITIKE, 3 (2009), 90-102 (p. 90).
214
‘Idealism’, in A Kant Dictionary, ed. by Howard Caygill, Blackwell Reference Online
http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/tocnode?id=g9780631175353_chunk_g978063117
535313_ss1-4 [accessed 8 May 2011].
215
Immanuel Kant, Theoretical Philosophy After 1781, ed. by Henry Allison and Peter Heath,
trans. by Gary Hatfield (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), IV:374 (p.
162).
216
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood
(Cambridge: New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), A 12 (p. 133). In the first edition, it
says, ‘all cognition transcendental that is occupied not so much with objects but rather with our a
priori concepts of objects in general.’
217
Kant, CPR, A 56 (p. 196). Here Kant argues that ‘not every a priori cognition must be called
transcendental, but only that by means of which we cognize that and how certain representations
(intuitions or concepts) are applied entirely a priori, or are possible (i.e., the possibility of
cognition or its use a priori)’.
213
134
experience’, the notion of experience is conditioned by the idea of the
transcendental.
In this respect, Kant’s philosophy can be seen basically as ‘an effort to
resolve the conflict between dogmatism (especially, Leibnzian) and skepticism
(especially, Humean)’.218 While he argues against the dictatorship of dogmatism
that human reason should be ‘set to limits’ owing to the possibility of truth only
in experience, he argues against the skepticism of empiricism that we have ‘a
priori knowledge independent of all experience, a kind of knowledge which
makes all our experience possible’.219 Although Kant’s transcendental idealism
appears to overcome the limitations of empirical skepticism and idealistic
dogmatism, it is still subject to dualism. In the First Critique, Kant makes a
distinction between phenomena and noumena: ‘Appearances, to the extent that
as objects they are thought in accordance with the unity of categories, are
called phaenomena. If, however, I suppose there are to be things that are
merely objects of understanding and that, nevertheless, can be given to an
intuition, although not to sensible intuition [. . .] such things would be called
noumena.’ 220 In order to allow human beings to have freedom in terms of
morality, he points out another difference between them that ‘there is no
freedom; everything in the world takes place solely in accordance with the
[mechanical] laws of nature [cause and effect]’, but there is in ‘man a power of
self-determination, independently of any coercion through sensuous impulses’.
Kant explains that ‘every effect in the world must arise either from nature or
218
219
220
Lakshmipathy, ‘Kant and the Turn to Romanticism’, p. 90.
Ibid., p. 90.
Kant, CPR, A249 (p. 347); quoted by Lakshmipathy, ‘Kant and the Turn to Romanticism’, p. 91.
135
freedom, or whether instead both, each in a different relation, might be able to
take place simultaneously in one and the same occurrence’. 221 He tries to
bridge the gap between noumena and phenomena by conceiving human actions
as being both spontaneous and subject to the mechanical laws of the natural
world of phenomena, but, as Lakshmipahty points out, Kant is ‘unclear about
how exactly the interaction between them is possible’. 222 As a result, the
dualism still remains.
In addition, Kant’s philosophy is prone to another dualism between the
‘regulative’ and the ‘constitutive uses of pure reason’. In fact, Kant formulates a
philosophy of science that repudiates the mechanical understanding of nature
but conceives it as dynamic. In his Physical Monadology and Critique of the
Power of Judgment, Kant argues that both attractive and repulsive forces are
required for natural phenomena. 223 For example, he explains how the solar
system was formed by means of the interaction of attractive and repulsive
forces in Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens.224 Nature is
221
Kant, CPR, A 536/B564 (p. 534); quoted by Lakshmipathy, ‘Kant and the Turn to Romanticism’,
p. 92.
222
Lakshmipathy, ‘Kant and the Turn to Romanticism’, p. 92.
223
Immanuel Kant, ‘The employment in natural philosophy of metaphysics combined with
geometry, of which sample I contains the physical monadology (1756)’, in Theoretical Philosophy
1755-1770, ed. and trans. by David Walford, in collaboration with Ralf Meerbote (Cambridge;
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 47-66 (see, pp. 62-63); Critique of the Power
of Judgment, ed. by Paul Guyer, trans. By Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2000). ‘hence it [imagination] is precisely as attractive as it was
repulsive for mere sensibility’, 5:258 (Part I, Sect. 27, p. 142); ‘in analogy with the law of the
equality of effect and counter-effect in the mutual attraction and repulsion of bodies’, 5:465 (Part
II, Sect. 90, p. 329); see also, ‘Metaphysical Foundations of Dynamics’, in Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science, trans. and ed. by Michael Friedman (Cambridge; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 33-74. Here Kant argues that ‘Matter is the movable
insofar as it fills a space’, and that it consists of two forces, ‘attractive force’ and ‘repulsive
force’. The former is ‘that moving force by which a matter can be the cause of the approach of
others to it’, and the latter is ‘that by which a matter can be the cause of others removing
themselves from it’, see pp. 33, 35.
224
Immanuel Kant, Universal Natural History of Theory of the Heavens, trans. by Stanley L. Jaki
(Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1981). Kant argues that ‘nature has still other forces in
136
defined as not a ‘motive power’ but a ‘formative power’ which is associated
with ‘self-propagating formative power’ and produces a product ‘in which
everything is an end and reciprocally a means as well’. 225 Although Kant
describes nature as a dynamic power, it is regarded as just ‘the mathematical
whole of all appearances and the totality of their synthesis’.226 He differentiates
the regulative principle from the constitutive principle: the former is ‘a principle
of the greatest possible continuation and the extension of experience, in
accordance with which no empirical boundary would hold as an absolute
boundary’, but only the latter can ‘anticipate what is given in itself in the object
prior to any regress’.227 And, for him, ‘a natural end is no constitutive concept
of understanding or of reason, but it can still be a regulative concept for the
reflecting power of judgment, for guiding research into objects of this kind.’228
Accordingly, ‘all appearances, are ‘not things, but rather nothing but
representations, and they cannot exist at all outside our mind.’229 In addition, he
distinguishes matter from substance, and identifies the former with appearance.
Matter as ‘a mere form or a certain mode of representation of an unknown
object’ ‘seem to cut themselves loose from the soul, as it were, and hover
outside it’.230 Thus matter is ‘substantia phaenomenon’ (phenomenal substance),
store which especially evidence themselves when matter is diluted into fine particles, whereby
they repulse one another and through their conflict with [the force of] attraction produce that
motion which is, so to speak, an enduring life of nature. Through this repulsive force, which
reveals itself in the elasticity of vapors in the strongly smelling bodies and in the expansion of all
spirituous matter and which is an indisputable phenomenon of nature, the elements sinking toward
their points of attraction become directed sidewise in all sorts of ways and the perpendicular fall
issues in circular motions which surround the center of sinking, p. 115.
225
Critique of the Power of Judgment, 5:374, 5:376 (Part II, Sect. 65-66., pp. 246-247).
226
Kant, CPR, B 446 (p. 465-466).
227
Kant, CPR, A509/B537 (p. 520).
228
Kant, Critique of the Power Judgment, 5:375 (Part II, Sect. 65, p. 247).
229
Kant, CPR, A 492 (p. 511).
230
Kant, CPR, A 385 (p. 434).
137
not a thing in itself.231
Kant’s transcendental idealism attempted to overcome the limitations of
empiricism and dogmatism by bringing about a unity between external reality
and the subject, but it could not solve the dualism. Unlike the empiricists, Kant
develops the idea of a priori, and at the same time, unlike the idealists, he
acknowledges the reality of external objects to the extent that nature has a
dynamical power. Yet, in his transcendental idealism, the knowledge is based on
the subject of the ‘I’ on the grounds that ‘objects of experience are never given
in themselves, but only in experience, and they do not exist at all outside it’.232
As a result, there is an irreducible dualism between phenomena and noumena.
4.4. Schelling’s idea of nature as self-subsistence
Criticising this lack of spirit in nature, Schelling develops Kant’s notion of
nature as a formative power into a state of self-subsistence by ‘transferring the
only possible positive conception of per-se-ity to things’. 233 For Schelling,
nature is not just an object, but it has its own absolute origin. He argues that ‘as
the object [qua ‘conditioned condition’] is never absolute/unconditioned
(unbedingt) then something per se non-objective must be posited in nature; this
absolutely non-objective postulate is precisely the original productivity of
nature’.234 The idea of nature is not just a sum of outer products, but also an
absolute producing subject. If Kant relates the transcendental, things in
231
Kant, CPR, A 277 (p. 375).
Kant, CPR, B 521 (p. 512).
233
Schelling, Of Human Freedom, trans. by James Gutmann (Chicago: The Open Court Publishing
Company, 1936), p. 25; quoted by Lakshmipathy, ‘Kant and the Turn to Romanticism’, p. 95.
234
Schelling, SW I/3, p. 284; Andrew Bowie, ‘Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling’, in The
Stanford
Encyclopedia
of
Philosophy,
ed.
by
Edward
N.
Zalta
<
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/schelling/> [accessed 21 May 2011].
232
138
themselves, with the subject I, Schelling associates nature with the conscious
being. Nature thus ‘carries within itself the ground of its own existence’. 235
This way of understanding nature not only re-interprets the essence of nature
but also marks an important turning point in the relationship between the world
and God. Whereas Kant is unclear about the interaction between phenomena
and noumena, Schelling opens up the possibility of a unity between nature and
God by conceiving nature as self-subsistence.
But the idea that nature has the ground of its own existence is similar to
Spinoza’s notion of substance which is subject to pantheism. Being aware of the
issue of pantheism with regard to the ground of nature, Schelling tries to
differentiate nature from the Absolute.236 He explains how God is different from
nature: ‘we understand by nature the absolute identity, insofar as it is to be
contemplated not as existing, but as the ground of its own being. Here the
existing absolute identity is to be distinguished from the not-existing, which is
merely the ground of its existence, and only the latter is called nature [. . .] the
existing absolute identity (God understood immanently; God as subject) must be
set above nature, the not-existing absolute identity.’237 Schelling regards God
as the existing absolute identity, and nature as the not-existing absolute
identity. Nature can be identified with God in terms of the ground of its own
being, but it needs to be differentiated from God in that it is not fully realised
yet like God himself.
235
Schelling, SW II, 38-41; see, Modiano, Coleridge and the Concept of Nature, pp. 161-162.
Modiano, Coleridge and the Concept of Nature, p. 167; Richard Berkeley, Coleridge and the
Crisis of Reason (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), pp. 118-142.
237
Schelling, SW VIII 25; Berkeley, Coleridge and the Crisis of Reason, p. 120.
236
139
4.5. The Trinitarian notion of God in Coleridge
So far, we have tried to contextualise the issue of pantheism in German
Romanticism by discussing the pantheism controversy, the dualism of Kant, and
the philosophy of Schelling. The focal point of the context was the idea of
nature and its relationship with God in the attempt to unify the whole universe.
In Coleridge and Kantian Ideas in England, 1796-1817, Monika Class pointed
out that Coleridge was searching for ‘an Absolute Unity’ through ‘the possibility
of metaphysics’ but his ‘thorough study of Kant appears to have entailed an
element of disappointment’. 238 First, Coleridge, like Schelling, criticises Kant
for the dualism of matter and spirit. 239 He tries to show that matter is not
merely an object, but is deeply related to spirit. We have seen that, for Kant,
matter consists of two distinct powers, ‘attraction’ and ‘repulsion’, and
Coleridge mentions that Kant regards matter as merely these two powers.240
For Coleridge, however, the two powers are just the properties of matter:
‘Matter [is] assumed as a datum, the subject of the powers / tho’ two of these
powers are elsewhere taken as constituting matter!’241 Further, he disagrees
with the Kantian understanding of nature as regulative but not constitutive.242
According to Aristotle and Kant, Ideas are regulative only, but Coleridge
maintains that they are ‘CONSTITUTIVE, and one with the power and Life of
Nature’.243 For him, ‘AN IDEA is an educt of the Imagination actuated by the
238
Monika Class, Coleridge and Kantian Ideas in England, 1796-1817: Coleridge’s Response to
German Philosophy (London; New York: Bloomsbury, 2012), pp. 172-174.
239
Modiano, Coleridge and the Concept of Nature, p. 154; Marginal note to Kant, Metaphysische
Angangsgrilnde der Naturwissenschaft, p. 80-81; CN IV, p. 71.
240
Modiano, Coleridge and the Concept of Nature, p. 156; fly-leaf note referring to pp. 45-6.
241
Modiano, Coleridge and the Concept of Nature, p. 156; marginal note, pp. 103-4.
242
See, Vigus, Platonic Coleridge, p. 47.
243
SM (Appendix E), pp. 113-114.
140
pure Reason, to which there neither is or can be an adequate correspondent in
the world of the senses.’244 The implication is that the notion of ‘An Idea’ is
transcendental in terms of Kantian terms but this ‘Idea’ is not separated from
nature, but is one with it. Like German Romantics, Coleridge tries to empower
nature to be more than a mere object.
Secondly, whereas Coleridge agrees with Schelling’s rejection of the
dualism, he disagrees with his concept of nature because of pantheism. In a
letter he argues that:
Schelling is the Head and Founder of a philosophic Sect, entitled Naturphilosophen, or Philosophers of Nature. He is beyond doubt a Man of
Genius, and by the revival and more extensive application of the Law of
Polarity (i.e. that every Power manifests itself by opposite Forces) [. . .]
his System is extremely plausible and alluring at a first acquaintance. And
as far as his attack on the mechanic and corpuscular Philosophy extends,
his works possess a permanent value. But as a System [. . .] it is reduced
at last to a mere Pantheism.245
This passage shows that Coleridge was influenced by Schelling in terms of
natural philosophy and at the same time how he criticises his notion of nature
as pantheistic. Although Schelling tries to avoid pantheism by distinguishing
nature from the Absolute, nature as a self-subsistent reality, for Coleridge, is
still equivalent to the pantheistic equation of God with nature.246 If, Coleridge
argues, ‘God as God be the one necessary Existence, if he be Ens semper
perfectum, and all-sufficient, the material World cannot be necessary – and if it
244
245
246
Ibid., 113-114.
CL IV, p. 883?; Berkeley, Coleridge and the Crisis of Reason, p. 111.
See Modiano, Coleridge and the Concept of Nature, p. 167.
141
be, then God as God is not self-sufficing – i.e. he is not GOD, but a part of the
universe, nay, a product of the same.’ 247 If nature is conceived as selfsubsistent in itself, God cannot be ‘the one necessary Existence’. Accordingly,
Schelling’s idea of nature leads to pantheism and atheism. Coleridge always felt
the need for much clearer distinctions between the natural world and the
Absolute, but Schelling violates the boundary between them.
Coleridge’s solution to the tension between the immanence and the
transcendence of God was to turn eventually to the Trinitarian notion of God. In
his philosophical lectures he states that:
First of all the highest and best of men felt by an impulse from their
reason and necessity to seek an unity, and those who felt wisely like Plato
and Socrates, feeling the difficulties of this, looked forward to that Being
of whom this necessity and their reason was a presentiment to instruct
them.248
While he suggests that the power of reason encourages us to look for unity, it is
through divine revelation that we can attain the goal. Coleridge tries to
reconcile the clash between reason and faith by arguing that unity is based on
faith. He argues continually that ‘without personality there can be no God for
Religion: & that the Xtn Trinity is the only possible Medium’. 249 What the
247
CL IV, pp. 874-875.
Lectures 1818-1819 On the History of Philosophy I, ed. by J. R. de J. Jackson, p. 133; see,
Berkeley, ‘The Providential Wreck: Coleridge and Spinoza’s Metaphysic’, European Romantic
Review, 17 (2006), 457-475 (p. 465).
249
A note to Johann Albert Heinrich Reimarus’s Über die Gründe der menschlichen Erkentniss
und der natürlichen Religion in CM IV, pp. 215 -231 (p. 226); ‘it is the personal, living, selfconscious God, which it is so difficult, except by faith of the Trinity, to combine with an infinite
being infinitely and irresistibly causative’, a note to Richard Baxter’s Reliquiae Baxterianae, in
CM I, pp. 240-361 (p. 242); Coleridge also holds that ‘the Trinity is the only form in which an
idea of God is possible, unless indeed it be a Spinozistic or World-God’, in Notes on English
248
142
Trinitarian idea of God enables him to do is to make compatible both the
transcendence of God and the immanence of God. In terms of the Trinity, God
as ‘the Universal Soul’ is present in the whole universe, and at the same time
He as the transcendental Being remains the Absolute Other.
It is through the relational dynamic of the Trinity that Coleridge overcame
the problem of pantheism. In theology, one of the main tasks for the
understanding of the Trinity is to maintain both the unity of God as one divine
subject and the dynamic mutuality of the Triune God. To understand the Trinity
as a relational dynamic has great significance in a sense that it can overcome
the dangers of tritheism and modalism. Interestingly, Coleridge is one of the
pioneering thinkers who introduced the relational notion of the Trinity to
England, but we often overlook this fact. We are, according to Stephen Ford,
‘indebted to Coleridge for contributing to English-speaking theology the
technical
Trinitarian
term
“interpenetration”,
the
equivalent
of
“perichoresis”’. 250 He used the term ‘perichoresis’ twice: ‘it is an eternal
proceeding from the Father to the Son and from the Son to the Father, but such
procession being in its nature circular [. . .] the Greek Fathers have entitled the
‘perichoresis or co-eternal intercirculation of Deity’; ‘in the synthesis of these,
in the Life, the Love, the Community, the Perichoresis, or Inter(cir)culation –
and that there is one only God.’ 251 As Coleridge mentioned, this term,
perichoresis, is traced back to the Cappadocians, the Eastern tradition, and
Divines, 2 vols., ed by Derwent Coleridge (Lond., 1853), I, p. 12; Berkeley, ‘The Providential
Wreck’, pp. 461, 464-465.
250
Stephen H. Ford, ‘Perichoresis and Interpenetration: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Trinitarian
Conception of Unity’, Theology: a journal of historic Christianity, 89 (1986), 20-24 (p. 20).
251
Ibid., p. 21; CL VI, p. 1738.
143
Richard of St Victor.
The idea of the Trinity as perichoresis represents not the unity of a
substance, but that of a community or communion in which there are three
subjects, Father, Son and Spirit. Perichoresis refers to the mutual dwelling of
the divine persons in which the subjects are not separate or isolated
individualities, but maintain an interpersonal relationship. As Grabowsky puts it,
there are two different kinds of understanding of person in the past, ‘person
understood as substance and person being seen as constituted by relation’.252
This relationality is not in opposition to personal identity but is constitutive of
what being a person means. Thus ‘by virtue of their eternal love, the divine
persons exist so intimately with one another, for one another and in one
another that they constitute themselves in their unique, incomparable and
complete unity.’ 253 Likewise, Coleridge explains this cyclical movement like
this: ‘the Holy Spirit proceedeth from the Father to the Son’, and ‘is returned
from the Son to the Father’ and ‘in this circulation constitutes the eternal unity
in the eternal alterity and distinction- the life of Deity in actu purissima’.254 As
a result, the Trinity is construed as a communion of three divine subjects who
interact with one another through knowledge and love of one another.
Further, this interrelationship of the Trinity tends to include the world by
opening up their relations. The dynamic of the Trinity is involved in creation in
the sense that ‘the Spirit-Word polarity is reflected in all the powers, forces,
252
John S. Grabowski, ‘Person, Substance and Relation’, Communio, 22 (1995), 139-163 (p. 140).
Stanley J. Grenz, The Social God and the Relational Self (Louisville: Westminster John Knox
Press, 2001), p. 44.
254
OM, p. 209; ‘in actu purissima’ (‘in the most pure act’); James Boulger, Coleridge as Religious
Thinker, p. 141.
253
144
and products of the natural world’.255 Coleridge describes ‘the Father as Ipseity,
the Son as Alterity, and the Spirit as Community’, and the Word (Alterity) is
associated with the distinction and the Spirit (Community) with the unity in
relation to creation.256 As Coleridge conceives the life of nature as the principle
of polarity, the process of creation is that of the polarity of the Word and the
Spirit. 257 ‘The act of creation’, as Perkins put it, ‘is accomplished through a
polarization which transforms indistinction into unity (the peculiar quality of the
Spirit of Love and Community); and multeity into individuality (the peculiar
quality of the “Word”, who is distinction, “alterity”)’. 258 As a result, for
Coleridge, the act of creation is fundamentally based upon the Trinitarian idea
of God.
When Coleridge first came up with the notion of the one life, perhaps he did
not fully understand it. At this initial stage he might not have been aware of a
relational notion of the Trinity, but I would argue that Coleridge worked
towards this idea of a relational Trinity in his attempts to overcome the dualism
of matter and spirit and avoid the dangers of pantheism. Just as the relational
idea of the Trinity represents ‘distinction-in-unity’, so the idea of the one life
could point towards a relational idea of unity. When ‘one intellectual breeze’
makes nature ‘animated’, it does not mean that nature becomes God but that
255
Perkins, Coleridge’s Philosophy, p. 126.
Table Talk II, ed. by Carl Woodring (Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 65 (‘Bull and
Waterland. – The Trinity, 8 July 1827); OM, p. cxlii; see also, CN IV 5256; OM, p. cxxiii.
257
Coleridge argues that ‘Hence therefore we have a three fold Polarity-First that of the
Creaturely and the divine Will: second, the Indistinction and the Multeity in the creature itself, and
which as actualized by the Spirit and the Word [? Of] constitute it existentially, i.e. are both it and
its properties; thirdly, the result of the distinction of the divine Influences in the creature, and
partaking therefore of its essential (self-) contrariancy, in the opposite acts by which resisting
this it allies itself with that, OM, p. 392.
258
Perkins, Coleridge’s Philosophy, pp. 122-3.
256
145
nature becomes related to God through the Spirit of love, community and unity.
And all things become one in diversity through this relational dynamic. The
notion of the relational Trinity finally enabled the poet to hold together his early
interest in the immanence and his later concern about the transcendence. In this
respect, Coleridge’s thinking is less like pantheism but more like Moltmann’s
notion of the cosmic spirit as panentheism.
It has been shown that Coleridge tries to locate the unity of the universe
through a monistic idea and love of God in his early years, and the thoughts of
polarity and evolution in his later years. Coleridge’s notion of the unity
expresses two key ecotheological tendencies, the independent sacred value of
nature, and the inter-relatedness between humanity, nature, and God. First, the
presence of God enables the poet to articulate the relational aspect between
humanity and nature, and the relationship develops further through God’s love,
which permeates it. The evolutionary process of individuation also formulates
the inter-relatedness, and, at the same time, that inter-relatedness is
characterised by a mutual and reciprocal relationship; it is fundamentally
associated with the sense of sacrament and the religious aspects of imagination
and symbol. Secondly, the on-going tension between the mind and nature in
terms of the passivity and activity of the mind, and nature as an object of
natural philosophy, show that, for Coleridge, nature matters as materiality. In
addition, this nature is perceived as being sacred as God is present in it as a
power. In these respects, it can be argued that the works of Coleridge relate to
two ecotheological aspects.
146
Chapter 3
Wordsworth’s yearning for the sense of dwelling
This chapter aims to argue that we can see Wordsworth working towards
two ideas that have been very important in ecotheological writing: the
interrelatedness of the universe and the independent sacred value of nature.
Just as the core issue of ecotheology is nature’s relationship with humanity and
God, Wordsworth attempts ceaselessly to make sense of human life and the
world by scrutinising and contemplating the relationship between them. With
respect to his grand project of The Recluse Wordsworth announced to James
Tobin on 6 March 1798: ‘My object is to give pictures of Nature, Man, and
Society. Indeed I know not any thing which will not come within the scope of my
plan.’1 Two letters of 1804 underline the seriousness of his commitment: in a
letter to Sir George Beaumont in December, he mentioned that The Recluse ‘is
the chief object which my thoughts have been fixed these many years’, and, in a
letter to Thomas De Quincey in March, he said, ‘to this work I mean to devote
the Prime of my life and the chief force of my mind.’2 Intriguingly, Wordsworth
pronounces the relationship between ‘Nature, Man, and Society’ as ‘one
Household under God’ in the ‘Prospectus to The Recluse’, Home at Grasmere,
which is the First Book in the First Part of The Recluse.3 Particular attention
should be paid to this phrase, which I take as a crucial element in understanding
1
WL I, p. 212.
2
Ibid., pp. 518, 454.
HG, p. ix.
3
147
Wordsworth’s idea of dwelling from the perspective of religion.
If Coleridge was yearning to discover the unity of the universe throughout
his life, Wordsworth was longing to discover an ideal place for dwelling. In
other words, one of the essential thoughts with which Wordsworth is concerned
throughout his poetry is the idea of dwelling. It appears as early as The Vale of
Esthwaite (1787), his first sustained original poem.4 His way of understanding
the notion has an ecotheological dimension. It is concerned with ways of being
human on earth in a relational dynamic between humanity, nature, and God, and
it places an emphasis upon nature’s intrinsic independent value in terms of its
sacredness and materiality. I shall examine how the notion of dwelling in
Wordsworth relates to an ecotheological point of view.
1. The idea of Dwelling
1.1. Dwelling and the natural environment
Hubbell points out that Wordsworth’s epistemology of dwelling has been
explored in various ways over the last few decades, but answering the question
of what is dwelling for Wordsworth remains challenging.5 A difficulty may arise
from the complexity of the notion of ‘dwelling’ itself and his changing attitude
towards it. As the poet continues to develop the idea of dwelling, various
elements -- death, memory, imagination, transcendence -- begin to emerge in
the formulation of the idea. One of the key driving forces in his continuous
4
VE was written at the age of seventeen, and prior to his departure for Cambridge. It was
unpublished but Wordsworth published an ‘Extract’ of lines 498-513 of VE in 1815. See, Hartman,
Wordsworth’s Poetry, 1787-1814, rev. ed. (New Have: Yale University Press, 1971), p. 76.
5
J. Andrew Hubbell, ‘A Question of Nature: Byron and Wordsworth’, The Wordsworth Circle 41
(2010), 14-18 (p. 17).
148
exploration of the issue is his own experience of death and loss, which reminds
him of the vulnerability and mortality of humans. He appears to be obsessed
with finding a safe dwelling place immune to the transience and mortality of
human life. In the middle of his searching for such a place, his idea of dwelling
becomes more complicated in that the dynamics of memory, poetic imagination,
and transcendence develop a complex relationship with a physical geography.
The idea of dwelling is based on multiple layers of meaning: the natural
environment, the psychological and emotional aspects of life, and the idea of
transcendence. In other words, for Wordsworth, dwelling is not just about a
place to live, but a way of being in the world through a relational dynamic
between humanity, nature, and God.
Focusing on the importance of geography and locality, the relationship
between culture and nature, and organic natural process, Bate, McKusick and
Kroeber refer to the significance of dwelling in the natural environment for
Wordsworth. They argue that Wordsworth associated the sense of dwelling with
the natural environment, and they articulate Wordsworth’s sense of what he
considers the appropriate and positive relationship between humanity and
nature. The thought that ‘human identity is somehow tied to location’ has ‘both
a long ancestry over the centuries and a wide currency across cultures’, but
Bate tries to establish Wordsworth as ‘the founding father for a thinking of
poetry in relation to place, to our dwelling on the earth’ by claiming that his
‘poetry of place began to be inspired by place itself’, rather than by an
‘occasion’ of ‘a patron’s request, or a historical event or association’. 6 In
6
J. E. Malpas, Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography (Cambridge: Cambridge
149
particular, Bate coins the term ecopoetics, which asks ‘in what respects a poem
may be a making (Greek poiesis) of the dwelling place – the prefix eco- is
derived from the Greek oikos, the home or place of dwelling’, and we can
regard the poetry of Wordsworth as an imaginary natural environment in which
we can ‘accommodate ourselves to a mode of dwelling’. 7 The notion of
ecopoetics in Wordsworth reflects a close relationship between human dwelling
and the natural environment.
For example, at the beginning of Michael: A Pastoral Poem, Wordsworth
suggests that Michael, a shepherd, is interrelated with his natural surroundings
in terms of his way of dwelling. He dwells ‘Upon the forest-side in Grasmere
vale’ and nature becomes an essential part of his life:
Fields, where with cheerful spirits he had breathed
The common air, the hills which he so oft
Had climbed with vigorous steps, which had impressed
So many incidents upon his mind
Of hardship, skill or courage, joy or fear,
Which like a book preserved the memory
Of the dumb animals whom he had saved (ll. 65-71)
The expressions ‘cheerful spirits’, ‘his mind’, and ‘the memory’, indicate that
nature is associated not only with Michael’s physical body, but also with his
inner self. But he does not seem to recognise his close relationship with nature
in the sense that he ‘errs grossly’ because he ‘should suppose / That the green
valleys, and the streams and rocks, / Were things indifferent to the shepherd’s
7
Jonathan Bate, The Song of the Earth (London: Picador, 2001), p. 205.
Bate, The Song of the Earth, pp. 64, 75.
150
thoughts’ (ll. 62-4). Although Michael is not aware of such an intimate
relationship with his surroundings, Wordsworth refers to the effect the habitat
has on the shepherd to the extent that ‘these fields, these hills, / were his living
being even more / Than his own blood’ (ll. 74-6). Seamus Heaney holds that
‘the Westmorland mountains were so much more than a picturesque backdrop
for his shepherd’s existence’ and they were ‘rather companionable and
influential’, flowing in ‘to Michael’s psychic life’. These surroundings were thus
‘not inanimate stone but active nature, humanized and humanizing’.8 This mutual
relationship between Michael and the natural environment places nature at the
centre of his way of dwelling.
1.2. Dwelling and the Divinity
Emphasising the interdependent relationship of humanity and nature in the
idea of dwelling, we face a tension between different perspectives on the
natural world, for instance, between materialist and idealist, or theistic points of
view. Each of the above-mentioned critics implies spiritual dimensions in the
notion of nature. Bate mentions that Wordsworth sees ‘types and symbols of
eternity in the landscape of the Alps’. 9 McKusick shows how Wordsworth
formulates the idea of dwelling by vacillating between ‘an abyss of idealism’ and
‘the ineluctable presence of concrete material objects’. 10 For Kroeber, an
ecological view is not religious but naturalistic, and the Romantics as protoecological poets subscribe to ‘a fundamentally materialistic worldview’ and to ‘a
8
Seamus Heaney, Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978 (London: Faber and Faber, 1984),
p. 145.
9
Bate, Romantic Ecology, p. 20.
10
James C. McKusick, Green Writing: Romanticism and Ecology (London: Macmillan, 2000), p. 56.
151
biologically materialistic understanding of the human mind’. 11 He, however,
suggests that ‘the ecological tendencies of romantic poets were more complex
than mere substitutes for religious experiences’ and ‘religiosity’ needs not to be
excluded from ‘ecological conceptions of natural reality’.12 For instance, Home
at Grasmere, Wordsworth’s major nature poem, reveals the ‘physical’ and
‘materialistic’ notion of nature, but suggests this ‘need not be driven by
derogations of spirit’.13
None of these critics, however, pay serious attention to the relationship
between dwelling and the presence of God in Wordsworth. Generally speaking,
the religious dimension of Wordsworth’s poetry has been often neglected or
regarded only in terms of ‘the secularization of inherited theological ideas and
ways of thinking’.14 In addition, a materialistic and naturalistic perspective tends
to signify a disbelief in the creative power of a Deity or a belief in the power of
natural process to transform all forms of life, dismissing any possibility of a
transcendent dimension. But I will suggest that, if we are to grasp the full
meaning of dwelling in Wordsworth, we cannot ignore the role of the divinity in
his poetic mind.
One of the complexities in Wordsworth’s poetry is that his idea of dwelling
continues to change due to the painful experiences of death and loss.
Maintaining that ‘Wordsworth’s entire career was shaped by his need to find a
dwelling
place’,
John
Kerrigan
succinctly
divides
the
development
of
Wordsworth’s search for home into three periods: an early period in which the
11
12
13
14
Kroeber, Ecological Literary Criticism, pp. 8-9, 53 (also see, footnote).
Ibid., p. 53.
Ibid., p. 53.
152
poet ‘sought security in rural granges and rose-ringed cottages’; a second
phase, based on the awareness of the ‘insecurity and vulnerability of stonebuilt dwellings’, is concerned with the tomb which Wordsworth thought ‘an
immutable place to dwell’; finally, in a third phase, Wordsworth ‘committed
himself to thoughts of heavenly dwelling’, and ‘cottages and tombs are replaced
by chapels and churches’.15
Each phase is characterised not only by a relational dynamic between
humanity and the natural environment, but also by the power of the divinity,
whose aspects are different in each phase. If Wordsworth focuses upon the
earthly dwelling with the immanence of God in a peaceful and harmonious
relationship between humanity and nature in his early years, he gradually looks
at the heavenly dwelling with the transcendence of God later. At the same time,
the dynamics of memory and the poetic imagination are associated with this
relational aspect in formulating the notion of dwelling. Edward Soja conceives
‘the interpretation of human spatial organization as a social product’ in the
sense that the land around us is ‘a reflection of our culture and society’.16 I
would like to add a religious dimension to Soja’s social one. For Wordsworth,
the meaning of dwelling place is not only a physical geography, but a reflection
of his understanding of the relationship between humanity, nature, and God,
which develops through the dynamics of memory, a poetic imagination, and his
experience of death.
15
John Kerrigan, ‘Wordsworth and the Sonnet: Building, Dwelling, Thinking’, Essays in Criticism,
35 (1985), 45-75 (pp. 50-51).
16
Edward W. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory
(London: Verso, 1989), p. 79; Malpas, Place and Experience, p. 11.
153
1.3. Heidegger’s idea of dwelling
Heidegger offers us a notion of dwelling which bears a considerable
similarity with Wordsworth, an issue explored by several critics. In his essay,
‘Building Dwelling Thinking’, Heidegger develops and enriches the idea of
dwelling in a profound way by discussing the relational aspects of ‘earth, sky,
divinities and mortals’ – nature, humanity, and God. Given that ‘the idea of the
inseparability of persons from the places they inhabit is an especially important
theme in the work of Heidegger’, it is understandable that some critics
introduce Heidegger’s notion of dwelling to the interpretation of Wordsworth’s
poetry. 17 But they have tended not to deal with the issue of transcendence
seriously, focusing instead upon the close relationship between humanity and
place. Intending to introduce Heidegger’s notion of dwelling as a useful
framework for understanding Wordsworth’s idea of dwelling, it can be claimed
that Heidegger, like Wordsworth, tries to develop the notion of dwelling by
bringing together humanity, nature and the transcendence with a special
reference to human mortality.
For Heidegger, dwelling is far more than just a building in that ‘to be a
human being means to be on the earth as a mortal, it means to dwell’.18 At the
beginning of his essay, he traces the roots of the Old English and High German
17
Malpas, Place and Experience, p. 7; See, Jonathan Bate,The Song of the Earth, pp. x, 206;
Michael Peters and Ruth Irwin, ‘Earthsongs: Ecopoetics, Heidegger and Dwelling’, The Trumpeter,
18 (2002), 1-17.
18
Heidegger, BDT, p. 147; In his ‘Letter on Humanism’, referring to ‘the saying of Heraclitus’, he
mentions that ‘the abode of man contains and preserves the advent of what belongs to man in his
essence [. . .] Man dwells, insofar as he is man’; he also argues that ‘the house in which the
jointure of Being fatefully enjoins the essence of man to dwell in the truth of Being. This dwelling
is the essence of “being-in-the-world”’, in Basic Writings: from Being and Time (1927) to The
Task of Thinking (1964), ed. by David Farrell Krell (London; New York: Routledge, 1993), pp.
213-265 (pp. 256, 260).
154
word ‘Bauen’, which means to dwell. The word ‘bin’ belongs to ‘bauen’, and
therefore ‘ich bin and du bist’ refers to ‘I dwell and you dwell’. The implication
is that ‘the way in which you are and I am, the manner in which we humans are
on the earth, is Buan, dwelling’. 19 Heidegger attempts to show an intimate
association between dwelling and the meaning of human existence. Dwelling
thus signifies the ontological situation of human existence, the questions of who
we are, and the way we find ourselves in this world. For Heidegger, ‘dwelling is
the basic character of Being in keeping with which mortals exists.’20
It is through a relational aspect of being that Heidegger shows a strong
bond between dwelling and the truth of being. As early as Being and Time,
Heidegger identified the dynamic of interrelation as the central character of
being human. For him, Being as Being-in-the-world is openness to others and
things, and a clearer understanding of our being can be acquired by the set of
meaningful relationships – people, things and issues. 21 When we say that we
dwell, we mean that we build these relationships. In ‘Building Dwelling
Thinking’, Heidegger introduces four elements in the relational activities of
being-in-the-world – earth, sky, divinities, and mortals. Human beings discover
who they are and how they are by dwelling in the relational dynamic of the four
elements.
I would like to focus on three aspects of their relationship. First, Heidegger
recovers an ethical dimension of dwelling in the fourfold relationship. He argues
that the old word ‘bauen’ also means ‘to cherish and protect, to preserve and
19
20
21
Heidegger, BDT, p. 147.
Ibid., p. 160.
Nicholas Dungey, ‘The Ethics and Politics of Dwelling’, Polity, 39 (2007), 234-258 (p. 241).
155
care for, specifically to till the soil, to cultivate the vine’.22 In addition, the Old
Saxon ‘wuon’, the Gothic ‘wunian’ like the word ‘bauen’, mean to remain, to
stay in a place, but ‘wunian’ means ‘to be at peace, to be brought to peace, to
remain in peace: preserved from harm and danger’. 23 Referring to these
connotations of ‘bauen’ and ‘wunian’, Heidegger asserts that ‘the fundamental
character of dwelling is this sparing and preserving’, and that ‘mortals dwell in
the way they preserve the fourfold – earth, sky, divinities and mortals - in its
essential being’. 24 His way of preserving Earth and the Sky alludes to the
ethical responsibilities of human beings, those which enable Earth and the Sky
to be what they are. Mortals dwell in that they save the earth, and therefore
they set it free into its own being, rather than exploiting, mastering, or
subjugating it. Mortals dwell in that they receive the sky as sky, rather than
turning night into day, or day into a harassed unrest.25 According to Foltz, this
aspect of Heidegger’s thinking brings back a broadened notion of ethics, akin to
the idea of ‘coming into right relation’.26 While the narrowness of the modern
conception of ethics tends to concentrate only on certain sorts of moral
obligation, Heidegger’s idea concerns the bearing through which we comport
ourselves toward entities, how we hold ourselves in relation to the being of
entities, and how we in turn are held by our being.27 As a result, in his idea of
dwelling, Heidegger discovers a reciprocal relationship between mortals and the
22
Ibid., BDT, p. 149.
24
Ibid., p. 149.
25
Ibid., p. 150.
26
D. Ladkin, ‘When Deontology and Utilitarianism Aren’t Enough: How Heidegger’s Notion of
“Dwelling” Might Help Organizational Leaders Resolve Ethical Issues’, Journal of Business Ethics,
65 (2006), 87-98 (p, 92).
27
Bruce V. Foltz, Inhabiting the Earth: Heidegger, Environmental Ethics, and the Metaphysics of
Nature (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995), p. 168-169.
23
156
earth and sky through sparing and preserving.
Secondly, Heidegger conceives death as an essential part of dwelling. If
dwelling is the basic feature of Being, it cannot, to some extent, avoid the issue
of death. Human beings are called mortals because they can die, but Heidegger
holds that to die means ‘to be capable of death as death’.28 Being ‘capable of
death as death’ is neither to make death empty or nothing nor to darken
dwelling by blindly staring toward the end. Rather ‘mortals dwell in that they
initiate their own nature – their being “capable of death as death” – into the use
and practice of this capacity, so that there may be a good death.’29 Although
Heidegger does not articulate further the meaning of a good death in detail, he
appears to make death a basic part of dwelling in a constructive and positive
sense without generating a sense of discontinuity and emptiness.
Thirdly, Heidegger claims the oneness of the four elements. He proposes
that ‘mortals dwell in that they await the divinities as divinities [. . .] They wait
for intimations of their coming and do not mistake the signs of their absence’.30
In the long run, dwelling is built on saving the earth, receiving the sky, awaiting
the divinities, and initiating mortals. But the fourfold is achieved in a simple
unity. Heidegger provides an example of how earth, heaven, divinities, and
mortals accomplish the simple oneness in dwelling by describing the structure
of a farmhouse in the Black Forest, which was built some two hundred years
ago:
28
29
30
Ibid., p. 151.
Ibid., p. 150.
157
It placed the farm on the wind-sheltered mountain slope looking south,
among the meadows close to the spring [. . .] It did not forget the altar
corner behind the community table; it made room in its chamber for the
hallowed places of childbed and the ‘tree of the dead’-for that is what
they call a coffin there [. . .]31
The structure of the house shows how nature, the divinities, and death are
integrated into dwelling. Interestingly, the ‘tree of the dead’ is part of the house
through which the dwellers are reminded of human mortality as well as
remember their ancestors. Further, they appear to deal with this reality of the
death by awaiting the divinities and being dependent upon the transcendence of
the divinities, which ‘the altar’ may symbolise. All these elements as a single
unity contribute to establishing the idea of dwelling.
Heidegger thus provides a very important notion of dwelling for discussing
Wordsworth’s idea of it. He gives an explicit and systematic explanation about
dwelling which is expressed implicitly throughout the works of Wordsworth.
Thus it offers us a conceptual framework which helps us to analyse
Wordsworth’s idea of dwelling. As discussed above, Heidegger expresses a few
crucial thoughts on dwelling, the relational dynamic, the integration of death
into dwelling, and the significance of God in the oneness. For him, to dwell
means not just to inhabit a building, but a way of being human on the earth.
Likewise, Wordsworth’s idea of dwelling develops through the reality of death
and the presence of God.
1.4. The Vale of Esthwaite
31
Ibid., p. 160.
158
Before moving to the next section, it will be useful to introduce one of
Wordsworth’s very earliest poems, The Vale of Esthwaite. Although the poem
has received little attention, even criticised as being little more than ‘gothic
claptrap’, some critics see it as a seminal work for his mature poetry, either in
terms of his ideas of poetic imagination or the dynamic of emotion.32 I suggest
that The Vale of Esthwaite expresses some crucial elements in the idea of
dwelling. Most of all, it shows how deeply the poet experienced a sense of loss
and displacement and how intensely his yearning for dwelling was embedded in
his mind. The haunted visions of the poet’s underworld journey which occupy
the first half of the poem are followed by the memory of his father’s death:
With sighs repeated o’er and o’er,
I mourn because I mourned no more.
For ah! The storm was soon at rest
Soon broke the Sun upon my breast
Nor did my little heart foresee
-She lost a home in losing thee. (ll. 288-293)
What is noteworthy is his awareness of the consequence of the death. His
mother died when he was 8 years old, in 1778, and his father, John Wordsworth,
followed Wordsworth’s mother a few years later, in 1783. The death of his
father brought the sense of safety to an end. Certainly these deaths affected
their children outwardly in the changed situation of their lives as well as
inwardly in their emotion and psychology. Finally, in his delayed grieving for his
dead father Wordsworth became fully aware of the consequence of the death,
32
James H Averill, Wordsworth and the Poetry of Human Suffering (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP,
1980), p. 193.
159
‘losing home’.
If we look at a letter from Dorothy Wordsworth to her lifelong friend, Jane
Pollard, dating from late July 1787, the year when the poem was written, we
find that she, like her brother, became conscious of the result of her parents’s
death. Dorothy has been living with her mother’s cousin, Elizabeth Threlkeld, in
Halifax after her father’s death, but in May 1787 had to move to her Cookson
grandparents in Penrith.33 The letter which was written after two months in the
Cookson house shows how Dorothy felt about the way she was being treated:
We have been told thousands of times that we were liars but we treat
such behaviour with the contempt it deserves. [We] always finish our
conversations which generally take a melancholy turn, with wishing we
had a father and a home.34
Like Wordsworth’s poem, this passage reflects a growing understanding of what
the loss of their father meant. She again told Jane in February 1793 that ‘we in
the same moment lost a father, a mother, a home’.35 As Moorman rightly notes,
‘the real loss sustained by the Wordsworth children in the death of their father
was perhaps less that of a beloved person than of a happy home.’36 In fact, his
experience of death and loss does not end with the death of his parents, but
continues to challenge him through his life, as he had yet to face the death of
33
Mary Trevelyan Moorman, William Wordsworth: A Biography, vol. I, (London: Oxford
University Press, 1968), pp. 16, 18, 75; Gill, William Wordsworth, pp. 18, 34, 36; Duncan Wu,
Wordsworth: An Inner Life (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), pp. 7-8.
34
Duncan Wu, Wordsworth, p. 10.
35
The passage of the letter and the phrase, ‘losing home’ from the poem are so close, and Wu
suggests ‘either that Wordsworth had read Dorothy’s letter or that the poem influenced her’,
Duncan Wu, Wordsworth, p. 10.
36
Moorman, William Wordsworth I, p. 70.
160
his brother John and his own children later.
Obviously
Wordsworth’s
development
of
the
idea
of
dwelling
is
fundamentally associated with the experience of death. Even during this
juvenile period, we find that dwelling is not simply about a place to live, but has
multiple layers of meaning. The poem consists of three parts. The first part
describes the scenery of the shepherd, his dog, and a cottage. The second
reveals the anguished visions of an underworld journey, and the third expresses
the poet’s intellectual and emotional responses to both happy and painful
memories. Despite a lack of coherence, each part is closely involved with the
way the narrator experiences a sense of dwelling that is threatened and
shattered by death.
First, the natural environment, which displays harmony, peace, and joy,
becomes a crucial part of the experience of dwelling. At the beginning of the
poem, the narrator provides a detailed description of how the shepherd and his
dog dwell in harmony, peace, and joy, in a valley:
The shepherd’s restless dog I mark
Who bounding round with frequent bark
Now leaps aroun[d] th’uncovered plain
Now dives into the mist again
And while the guiding sound he hears
The [
] shepherd lad appears
Who knows his transport while he sees
His cottage smoking from the trees
[ ? ] [ ? ] then turns the shepherd boy
And claps his clinging dog for joy. (ll. 15-24)
161
Further, the narrator deepens the sense of this peaceful and harmonious
dwelling in nature by imagining that the scene of the shepherd and his dog
encircled by mist ‘seems an island in the air’ (ll. 13-14). Then the scene turns
to other obscure worlds with visions where the poet sees images of a battle
between ‘Gigantic moors’ (ll. 146). Right after this horrifying vision he tries to
soothe his ‘soul’ by reminding himself of the ‘pleasure’ of ‘lovely Grasmere’s
heav’nly vale’ (ll. 178, 180). The natural environment of ‘the landskip’s varied
treasure’ forms this portrayal of dwelling.
Secondly, dwelling is also associated with the incorporeal dynamic in that
the place for living has a psychological and emotional dimension. For the
narrator, the landscape is not only a place to live, but also a place that carries
memories of happiness and loss. Surveying ‘the Vale of Esthwaite’, the narrator
tells that the landscape contains his past:
The time when these sad orbs shall close
May hold before me Nature’s Page
Till dim seen by the eyes of age
Then basking in the noontide blaze
Here might I fix my feeble gaze
As on a Book companion dear
Of childhood’s ever-merry year
Retrace each scene with fond delight
While memory aids the orbs of sight. (ll. 339-347)
Then he pronounces, ‘From every rock would hang a tale’ (ll. 353). In particular,
the landscape is perceived as the ‘vale of woe’. Death, one of the dominating
images of the poem, has turned the vale into the ‘vale of woe’, and consequently
162
brought about displacement and disconnectedness. The implication is that the
natural environment is not only a physical place, but also a reflection of the
dweller’s memories. As mentioned earlier, the narrator realises that losing a
father means losing a home. The disturbed visions of the underworld journey in
the second part -- the images of wandering, weariness, suffering, aloneness,
separation, and displacement -- implies that the poet is struggling with the
experience of losing home not purely in physical terms of place, but on the
level of his emotion and psychology. But at the same time, the poet expresses
his desperate yearning for restoring this broken relationship with the people
and place in the third part.
Lastly, this longing for home is resonant with transcendent aspects. The
narrator attempts to overcome the experience of loss and displacement by
looking beyond the earthly dwelling. His painful awareness of death and the loss
of home is immediately followed by the ‘sweet voice’:
That says we soon again shall meet
For oft when fades the leaden day
To joy-consuming pain a prey
Or from afar the midnight bell
Flings on mine ear its solemn knell
A still voice whispers to my breast
I soon shall be with them that rest. (ll. 297-303)
He then describes his own death as a way of being together with them that rest:
‘Ah may my weary body may sleep / In peace beneath a green grass heap / In
church-yard such at death of day’ (ll. 314-316). In addition, at the end of the
163
poem, the poet conceives the relationship between his sister and himself as
‘heav’n connected chain’, which is ‘for ever’. It appears that dwelling involves
not only the earthly home but also a transcendent or spiritual space in that the
narrator deals with the consequence of death, ‘losing home’, by assuring himself
of being together in an eternal home. This is not to suggest that Wordsworth is
already referring to the heavenly home explicitly in this period, but we can see
here the seminal idea of a heavenly dwelling in Wordsworth. As he grows older,
his idea of heavenly dwelling becomes more conspicuous.
The Vale of Esthwaite has often been read in terms of its psychological and
biographical significance, and Duncan Wu also associates it with Wordsworth’s
experience of death.37 His biographical backgrounds provide some reasons why
he was struggling with the issue of dwelling. My aim in introducing this poem,
however, is not to simply relate it to these biographical contexts. Rather, my
purpose is to make one aware that in his early work Wordsworth was intensely
affected by a sense of loss and displacement in ways that profoundly
conditioned his yearning for home. Although there is a lack of coherence in this
early poem, it as a seminal work for his mature poetry contains some crucial
elements for dwelling. Having examined this early statement of the notion of
dwelling in the poetry, in the next three sections we will explore how it
develops from the idea of an earthly dwelling towards the community of the
living and the dead, and finally a heavenly dwelling. It will be suggested that the
relational dimension of dwelling reveals an ecotheological perspective.
37
Wu, Wordsworth, pp. 21-22; see also Kurt Fosso, ‘A World of Shades: Mourning, Poesis, and
Community in William Wordsworth’s The Vale of Esthwaite’, The Modern Language Review, 93
(1998), 629-641 (p. 631).
164
2. Dwelling in a cottage in Grasmere
2.1. Fears and anxieties about city-life, uncertainties, and mortality
This section discusses The Ruined Cottage, The Pedlar, Tintern Abbey, and
Home at Grasmere. I examine Wordsworth’s development of the trope of
dwelling in a cottage by discovering the relational dynamic between human
beings, the natural environment, and God. In this phase, Wordsworth appears to
find an ideal place for home in a cottage in a natural environment, ‘our dear
vale’ in Grasmere, and it seems that this is a reflection of his inner mind as well
as of the physical geography. One of the main characteristics in his idea of
dwelling is that it resonates with the anxieties of mortality and suffering. That
is, he tries to discover a dwelling place over and against such anxieties and
experiences. If we look at these poems, we recognise that a sense of
displacement and yearning for home are the main driving forces for formulating
the idea of dwelling. And the experience of displacement involves various
aspects: death, suffering, and the cold realities of life.
Although Wordsworth appears to find an ideal place for dwelling in the vale
of Grasmere, Home at Grasmere is still resonant with his anxieties and fears
about the inhuman ways of city-life and human mortality. On the one hand,
Geoffrey Hartman has focused on the joy and optimism of Home at Grasmere in
a sense that the poem remains ‘the sole sustained example of Wordsworth
making “A present joy the matter of a song”’.38 Karl Kroeber also views it as
the expression of a sense of the continuity between humanity and nature within
38
Hartman, Wordsworth’s Poetry, p. 171.
165
an unequivocal vision of ecological wholeness. 39 On the other hand, some
critics, including, Kenneth Johnston, Raimonda Modiano, and Bruce Clarke, draw
our attention to the anxieties, doubts, and tensions that imply his fears ‘being
“home at Grasmere” might not be the kind of being, the kind of home, or even
the kind of Grasmere he says it is’ due to the narrative’s sense of ‘an
imagination of mortal violence’. 40 Wordsworth’s optimistic vision of an ideal
dwelling place in the poem needs to be understood within the context of such
anxieties and fears. He does not seem to overcome them completely because
they reappear continuously throughout his later years. They remain a
significant component of his poetic vision. There is an inner tension between
these two aspects of his thinking, but it should be noted that his idea of home
develops through the interaction between them.
First of all, his idea of dwelling in the vale has been formulated by his
critical attitude towards the city. Just before declaring ‘The True community of
many into one incorporate’, he contrasts the urban metropolis as ‘a deracinated
space of alienation’41:
[. . .] he truly is alone,
He of the multitude, whose eyes are doomed
To hold a vacant commerce day by day
With that which he can neither know nor love—
Dead things, to him thrice dead-or worse than this,
39
Kroeber, Ecological Literary Criticism, p. 134,
Kenneth R. Johnston, ‘“Home at Grasmere”: Reclusive Song’, Studies in Romanticism, 14
(1975), 1-28 (p. 5); Raimonda Modiano, ‘Blood Sacrifice, Gift Economy and the edenic World:
Wordsworth’s “Home at Grasmere”’, Studies in Romanticism, 32 (1993), 481-521 (pp. 481-2);
Bruce Clarke, ‘Wordsworth’s Departed Swans: Sublimation and Sublimity in “Home at Grasmere”’,
Studies in Romanticism, 19 (1980), 355-374 (p. 357).
41
Kevin Hutchings, ‘Ecocriticism in British Romantic Studies’, Literature Compass 4/1 (2007),
172-202 (p. 193).
40
166
With swarms of life, and worse than all, of men,
His fellow men, that are to him no more
Than to the Forest Hermit are the leaves
That hang aloft in myriad. (ll. 808-816)
‘A vacant commerce day by day’ implies a sense of dehumanisation caused by
urbanisation and the Industrial Revolution, in which a person becomes just one
‘of the multitude’, without establishing a relationship with them in knowledge
and love. Intriguingly, this passage reminds us of Wordsworth’s representation
of urban life in Tintern Abbey in which the two phrases ‘in lonely rooms’ and ‘in
hours of weariness’ ‘mid the din of towns and cities’ (ll. 26-28) convey the
experience of isolation. ‘Towns and cities’ are full of people, but the poet still
feels ‘lonely’, and he appears to be disconnected with them in the middle of ‘a
vacant commerce’. In Book VII of The Prelude: Residence in London,
Wordsworth provides an account of the alienated nature of city-life: ‘how men
lived / Even next-door neighbours (as we say) yet still / Strangers, and
knowing not each other’s names’ (ll. 118-120).
In addition to the experience of the isolation of city-life, Wordsworth
describes his struggle with ‘the Realities of Life’: ‘so cold, / So cowardly, so
ready to betray, / So stinted in the measure of their grace’ (ll. 54-6). Here he
expresses a critical voice against the inhuman and corrupted way of city-life. In
his pastoral poem, Michael, the poet shows how the shepherd’s son, Luke, who
has been raised to understand the value of the natural environment, ‘gave
himself to evil courses’ and was lost into depravity and disgrace after moving to
‘the dissolute city’ (ll. 453-456). Further, in Home at Grasmere, his wrestling
167
with ‘the Realities of Life’ is also partly caused by something which ‘was
deemed so difficult’ in his ‘blindness’ (ll. 75, 76). In Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth
describes this sense of difficulty and blindness as ‘the burthen of the mystery’
which brings about ‘the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible
world’, ‘the many shapes of joyless day-light’, and ‘the fever of the world’ (ll.
39-41, 52-55). Critics have articulated various senses of ‘the burthen of the
mystery’. Weinfield suggested the poet’s struggle is ‘at once personal (and
private) and religious (and public)’.42 On a personal level, he may have been
afflicted with the on-going issues of loss, mortality, and powerlessness in life,
particularly during the early 1790s, for example, ‘his impotent hostility to his
own country’s policies, his responsibility to Annette and their child, and the lack
of direction and of financial independence’.43 In addition, it has been suggested
that the poet had to face a religious and epistemological crisis in relation to a
tension between Christianity and the Enlightenment in terms of materialism,
rationalism, and necessitarianism.44 Thus, that crisis may have caused the poet
to oscillate between skepticism and affirmation, which creates a sense of
instability.45
Another significant element which seems to cast a shadow over the
harmony and safety of dwelling is the destructive power of death. Interestingly,
at the beginning of Home at Grasmere, Wordsworth explains that even when he
42
Henry Weinfield, ‘“These beauteous forms”: “Tintern Abbey” and the post-Enlightenment
religious crisis’, Religion and the Arts 6 (2002), 257-290 (p. 258).
43
Gill, William Wordsworth, pp. 153-4; in Books XI and XII of the Prelude (1850), Wordsworth
speaks of his personal crisis during the 1790s, ‘This was the crisis of that strong disease, / This
the soul’s last and lowest ebb; I drooped, / Deeming our blessed reason of least use / Where
wanted most’ (ll. 306-309).
44
Brian Barbour, ‘“Between Two Worlds”: The Structure of the Argument in “Tintern Abbey”’,
Nineteenth-Century Literature, 48 (1993), 147-168 (p. 150).
45
See Weinfield, ‘“These beauteous forms”’, p. 283.
168
saw the vale and thought of ‘living here’ as ‘happy fortune’, he imagined that ‘if
I thought of dying, if a thought / Of mortal separation could come in / With
paradise before me, here to die’ (ll. 9-12). As a boy, he associated the
happiness of dwelling with the stern reality of mortality. Home at Grasmere
offers four episodes about a pair of swans and some couples which are related
with death. First, the description of ‘Sweet Spring’ in Grasmere is followed by
absence:
But two are missing – two, a lonely pair
Of milk-white swans. Ah, why are they not here?
There above all, ah, why are they not here
To share in this day’s pleasure? (ll. 322-5)
The poet and his wife, Emma, ‘saw them day by day, / Through those two
months of unrelenting storm’, and ‘knew them well’ (ll. 329-330, 332). The
reason he is so concerned about their absence is not only ‘their beauty and
their still /And placid way of life and faithful love’ but also the resemblance
between this pair, and the poet and Emma: ‘They also having chosen this
abode- / They strangers, and we strangers – they a pair / And we a solitary
pair like them’ (ll. 339-341). He hopes that ‘neither pair be broken’ (ll. 350), but
‘an imagination of mortal violence breaks into’ this hope that ‘the shepherd may
have seized the deadly tube’ or ‘haply both are gone’ (ll. 352, 356). 46 The
absence of the swans thus implicitly brings about a sense of anxiety regarding
the security of his relationship with his wife in the face of the threat of death.
Secondly, Wordsworth also expresses anxiety about death in the three
46
Clarke, ‘Wordsworth’s Departed Swans’, p. 357.
169
stories about local dwellers in the vale of Grasmere. He refers to the attraction
of ‘all Arcadian dreams, / All golden fancies of the golden age’ (ll. 829-830), but
he reminds us that the local dwellers of Grasmere cannot avoid the human
condition of death. The first story is about a local farmer who deceived his wife
with their maid. Then he lets his farm go to ruin out of remorse, and ‘could not
bear the weight of his own shame’ and ‘died of his own grief’ (ll. 531-2). The
second one is about a father whose wife died a long time ago and left him ‘many
helpless children’ (ll. 538). Although it is a ‘tale / Of sorrow and dejection’, the
poet discovers that ‘the whole house is filled with [the] gaiety’ of the children
(ll. 539-540, 606). In the final episode, the ruinous power of mortality is
contrasted with the blooming of a grove. A dame explains that she and her now
dead husband had planted this grove, ‘Just six weeks younger than her eldest
boy’ (ll. 613). While they ‘No longer flourish’: he ‘entirely gone’ and she
‘withering in her loneliness’, the plant is ‘now flourishing’ (ll. 640-2).
Immediately after these episodes, he tries to convince himself that:
No, we are not alone: we do not stand,
My Emma, here misplaced and desolate,
Loving what no one cares for but ourselves.
We shall not scatter through the plains and rocks (ll. 646-649)
Whereas the poet expresses his deep yearning for a happy dwelling with Emma
in Grasmere, this passage portrays his fear of human mortality in the sense that
the three stories cast the shadow of death on their dwelling.
170
2.2. Dwelling and the inner self in the Ruined Cottage
If we look at The Ruined Cottage, we can see how the experience of death
and loss destroys the sense of dwelling. This poem, written in 1797-98, but
published as book I of The Excursion in 1814, is an account about the
disintegration of Margaret’s family and her silent suffering.47 As war destroys
the rural economy, her husband, Robert, deserts Margaret and enlists in the
military. Leaving ‘a purse of gold’ for his family, he could not face saying
farewell. And he never came back home. Her eldest child and little babe also
died later, and eventually ‘she was left alone’ (ll. 476). The disintegration of her
family leads to the loss of home in that she herself became a wanderer in her
own place. Interestingly, losing people brings about a disrupted relationship
between Margaret and the place where she lives. The deterioration is captured
by Margaret’s wandering and the pedlar’s account of the decaying of her
cottage. After Robert left, Margaret ‘was used to ramble far’ (ll. 382). She
herself mentions that she has ‘wandered much of late and has need of her best
prayers to bring her back again’ (ll. 399-401). After the disappearance of her
husband and the death of her eldest child, she hopes that:
[ . . . ] heaven
Will give me patience to endure the things
Which I behold at home (ll. 412-414)
The ‘things’ are not specified, but we can assume that they are ‘the things’
which may remind her of the fuller sense of dwelling with which they are
47
See, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 2, sixth ed., ed. by M. H. Abrams (New
York; London, W. W. Norton and Company, 1993), p. 160.
171
associated. Her restlessness shows that she has lost a sense of rootedness and
comfort.
The
pedlar
returns
to
the
cottage
several
times
after
Robert’s
disappearance, and provides an eyewitness account of how it has been ruined.
On his first return, he describes how Margaret’s face had become ‘thin and pale’
(ll. 396) and her cottage was changed:
And knots of worthless stone-crop started out
Along the window’s edge and grew like weeds
Against the lower panes. [. . .]
The unprofitable bindweed spread his bells
From side to side, and with unwieldy wreaths
Had dragged the rose from its sustaining wall
And bowed it down to earth. (ll. 368-370, 372-375)
On his second return, he clearly sees that ‘a sleepy hand of negligence’ (ll. 440)
has shadowed the place, and finally, that ‘her poor hut / Sunk to decay’ (ll. 512513). The process of the cottage’s ruination reflects an estrangement between
her and the place.
Particularly, the decaying cottage demonstrates the crucial relationship
between the place and her inner self. As Wordsworth lost a home by losing his
parents, Margaret is displaced by losing her family. If, for Wordsworth, the loss
of his parents brought about the loss of home, Margaret’s loss of her family
does not drive her from the place as a locality, but she does lose it as a home in
terms of dwelling. What has changed is not the place, but her inner situation.
Furthermore, ‘the things’ in her home deepen her experience of loss, because
172
they evoke absence as well as memory. It is not the place itself, but her inner
state of the mind that causes her displacement. Accordingly, dwelling involves
the relationship between a place and her inner self. In this respect, Margaret’s
dwelling place remained a home for her physical body, but not for her inner self.
The pedlar’s closing comment on Margaret and her cottage conveys the
complex meaning of dwelling:
She loved this wretched spot, nor would for worlds
Have parted hence; and still that length of road
And this rude bench one torturing hope endeared,
Fast rooted at her heart (ll. 523-526)
‘This wretched spot’ used to be her home, but the absence of her family
deprived her of the proper sense of dwelling. The image of wretchedness
represents
her broken relationship
with the
place and the sense of
uprootedness on a psychological and spiritual level. But the fact that she still
‘loved this wretched spot’ and cherished hope of Robert’s returning ‘at her
heart’ reflects her yearning for a restoration of home. In the Ruined Cottage,
her yearning for home is not concerned so much with the place itself as with
her husband and children. In the long run, the meaning of dwelling requires a
place not only for a physical body but also for the dynamic of an inner self in
relation to psychology and spirituality.
2.3. The experience of the one life
Having looked at Wordsworth’s struggles, fears, and anxieties about death
173
and the alienation of urban life, I will discuss his attempts to discover an ideal
place for dwelling in the vale of Grasmere. We have seen how the loss of family,
the experience of alienated city-life, and the burden of the mystery, ruin the
harmony and joy of dwelling, but his poetry continues to point towards a
relationship between humanity, nature, and God as the foundation for a home
over and against them. Both the natural environment and the notion of
transcendence constitute an indispensable part in dwelling. Particularly, in this
phase, for Wordsworth, the concept of the one life is crucial to the formulation
of a dwelling place in relation to the three elements.
For Wordsworth, the idea of the one life becomes one of the primary
themes of his writing in the 1790s, especially after Wordsworth developed a
close relationship with Coleridge in 1797-1798.48 During these years, the two
poets met frequently and exchanged their ideas on various subjects. There is
no doubt that this relationship contributed to Wordsworth’s intellectual
development in a profound way. Later Wordsworth mentioned that Coleridge
was ‘one of the two beings to whom my intellect is most indebted’.49 Although
Wordsworth owes the idea of the one life to Coleridge, he develops it in a
different way. H. W. Piper made an interesting comment on the difference
between them in this regard. Whereas Coleridge was ‘preoccupied with the
creative nature of the soul and with his loss of poetic power, and became more
concerned with the Imagination as an activity of the mind’, Wordsworth
‘continued to see it [the one life] as a natural phenomenon occurring in the life
48
49
See, Moorman, William Wordsworth I, pp. 270-271; Gill, William Wordsworth, pp. 93, 111, 122.
WL V, p. 536.
174
of a chosen being’.50 This contrast reflects their different ways of pursuing the
idea of the one life. Coleridge gradually turned from poetry to prose, in which
he continued to try to formulate a grand theory for the unity of the universe. By
contrast, what matters for Wordsworth is his own personal experience, often
associated with feeling rather than any larger theory. As Jonathan Wordsworth
put it, he must experience his ideas ‘on his pulses’. 51 If Coleridge tried to
articulate the oneness of the universe through his voluminous readings and hard
thinking, Wordsworth had to contemplate and to feel it in his personal
experience. Presupposing that there is the one life, Coleridge tried to find it
through recent scientific discoveries, philosophy, and theology. Rather than
being interested in the grand idea of the one life, Wordsworth was more
preoccupied by various issues about human life, for example, the experiences
of grief, loss, and suffering.
The Pedlar, composed in February – March 1798, was originally planned to
be part of The Ruined Cottage, which was written the previous summer, but
they were never published as one single poem. 52 In The Ruined Cottage the
pedlar tells the tragic story of Margaret, but in The Pedlar the narrator provides
the story of the pedlar in Part I. Like Margaret, the pedlar underwent a painful
experience of loss and poverty. When he was a boy, his father died and left the
family destitute. Whereas Margaret becomes disconnected from her dwelling
place, the pedlar moves beyond suffering. His enlightenment does not take
50
Piper, The Active Universe, p. 137.
Jonathan Wordsworth, William Wordsworth: The Borders of Vision (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1982), p. 286.
52
Jonathan Wordsworth suggests that Wordsworth might have decided that The Pedlar was too
long, or too different, to be part of The Ruined Cottage. See, ‘The Pedlar’, in The Pedlar, Tintern
Abbey, The Two-Part Prelude, ed. by J. Wordsworth (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985), p. 19.
51
175
place suddenly, but is related with the formation of his mind. Various elements
contribute to the development of the pedlar’s mind. He was taught to fear God
and to respect ‘God’s word’ (ll. 112-113). He also read books ‘greedily’ (ll.
164-174). Interestingly, he could not find ‘love’ or ‘the pure joy of love’ in
books (ll. 175-180). It was through the power of nature that he was able to feel
‘the lesson deep of love’ (ll. 180-185). In other words, he learned through his
relationship with nature what he could not gain in the more traditional way via
religious education, or knowledge of books.
Furthermore, the Pedlar was able to experience the presence of God in
nature. When he was a boy, he ‘had perceiv’d the presence and the power / Of
greatness’ in the wood on his way back home. While tending herds on the tops
of the high mountains, he beheld the sun:
Rise up, and bathe the world in light. He look’d;
The ocean and the earth beneath him lay
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touch’d,
And in their silent faces did he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy: his spirit drank
The spectacle. Sensation, soul, and form
All melted into him: they swallow’d up
His animal being: in them did he live
And by them did he live. They were his life, (ll. 192-201)
Intriguingly, he describes this mystical experience as a ‘visitation from the
living God’ (ll. 203). This much-quoted passage represents clearly the idea of
the one life in terms of the relationship between humanity and nature and God
176
to the extent that nature and the pedlar are united by living in each other’s life
through the presence of God in nature. In the one life, he can experience
‘unutterable love’ and ‘joy’, but it should be noted that the experience is based
on the immanence of God in nature. A parallel passage in Tintern Abbey also
communicates a similar experience of the one life. The poet, like the pedlar, felt
‘a presence’ in nature:
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man – (ll. 98-100)
When he becomes aware of ‘a presence’ in nature, he, at the same time,
perceives ‘a motion and a spirit that impels / All thinking things, all objects of
all thought, / And rolls through all things’ (ll. 102-103). Therefore, for him,
nature was ‘all in all’ (ll. 76). The immanence of God in nature enables the poet
to recognise the unity of all things and to feel ‘the joy of elevated thoughts’ (ll.
95-6).
In fact, these two passages are often regarded as pantheistic. But it is
important to pay attention to the sense of immanence and transcendence in
them. Integration seems to be offered between the Presence in nature and the
Absolute Otherness. ‘The sun’s bathing the world in light’ conjures up a striking
image of how God is present in the whole universe, but the idea of ‘visitation
from the living God’ implies that the universe and its Creator are distinct.
Although the pedlar experiences the one life through the visitation, he
177
confesses that ‘He did not feel the God, he felt his works’. 53 A distinction
between God and His creature is thus drawn. In a similar vein, Tintern Abbey
communicates such a distinction in terms of the poem’s portrayal of dwelling.
The notion that nature is the dwelling place of God seems to evoke a
pantheistic mood, but does not identify nature with the transcendence of God in
the poem. In fact, the idea of the accommodation of God as a traditional
Christian concept implies how God can dwell in nature. In his Essay,
Supplementary to the Preface of 1815, Wordsworth himself explains the
traditional accomodatio:
The commerce between Man and his Maker cannot be carried on but by a
process where much is represented in little, and the infinite Being
accommodates himself to a finite capacity.54
As the concept of accomodatio reflects a distinction as well as integration
between the infinite Being and the finite creature, God’s dwelling in nature
maintains both immanence and transcendence. He is immanent in nature in that
He accommodates himself to it, and at the same time He is transcendent as long
as a distinction between the dweller and the place remains. Accordingly, the
presence of God in the two comparable passages ought to be conceived as the
vitality of immanence and transcendence, rather than as pantheism. The
implication is that, in this stage, Wordsworth appears to put emphasis on the
immanence of God as he tries to build up an ideal place for home in the natural
environment.
53
54
These sentences are omitted in the text of MS. E (1803-1804).
Essay, Supplementary to the Preface, in Prose III, pp. 55-107 (p. 65).
178
Having argued that the idea of the one life is deeply religious in terms of
his experience of divine immanence in nature, the outcome of the pedlar’s
visionary experience remains to be explored. It is noteworthy that the pedlar is
able to corroborate his religious faith through his mystical experience. After
having encountered the one life in relation to nature and God, he finally
authenticates his religious faith:
Oh! Then, how beautiful, how bright appear’d
The written promise! He had early learn’d
To reverence the Volume which displays
The mystery, the life which cannot die:
But in the mountains did he feel his faith: (ll. 212-216)
The passage implies a tension between the teaching of historical Christianity
and personal experience in nature. Although he has learned the teachings of the
faith, it appears that he is able to convince himself of them through his personal
and mystical experience in nature. It is through the ‘unutterable love’ in the
unity of nature that he can embrace ‘the written promise’ and ‘the life which
cannot die’, which empowers him to overcome the pain of mortality.
The wisdom of nature expands the perceptive power of his mind in a sense
that he came to see what others could not see. The pedlar tells the narrator
that:
I see around me here
Things which you cannot see: we die, my Friend,
Nor we alone, but that which each Man lov’d
And priz’d in his peculiar nook of earth
179
Dies with him, or is chang’d; (ll. 405-409)
Reminding us of the inevitable reality of death and the transience of our life, he
implies that he found a way of going beyond that reality. After finishing the
tragic story, the pedlar acknowledges that he has created a sense of sorrow. He,
however, argues that:
What we feel of sorrow and despair
From ruin and from change, and all the grief
The passing shews of being leave behind,
Appear’d an idle dream that could not live
Where meditation was: (ll. 865-869)
Through meditation he seems to be able to conceive the sorrow of despair,
death, and mutability as ‘an idle dream’. In spite of the sadness of the tragic
story, he could thus find ‘tranquility’ and ‘walked along his road in happiness’ (ll.
862, 870). His visionary experience of the one life reveals that his way of
overcoming this reality is not to compensate for it with the joy of the
experience, but to be aware of the promise of immortality, which was ‘felt’ by
the experience. At the end, he consoles the narrator by saying that ‘she sleeps
in the calm earth, and peace is here’ (ll. 856). The faith of immortality based
upon the infinite Being allows him to feel the interrelatedness of life even in the
face of death and mutability.
Likewise, in Home at Grasmere, Wordsworth explores the consolation of
immortality as a way to overcome suffering. Despite the anxieties of death felt
in the poem, the poet, like the pedlar, is willing to challenge the shadow of our
180
life:
The Vision of humanity and of God
The Mourner, God the Sufferer, when the heart
Of his poor Creatures suffers wrongfullyBoth in the sadness and the joy we found
A promise and an earnest that we twain (ll. 244-248)
Interestingly, this passage refers to the two natures of Christ who was both God
and human. He was divine, but at the same time human, ‘the Sufferer’. He died
as a human but revealed the idea of immortality in the divine. ‘A promise’
assures the poet that, ‘in the midst of these unhappy times, all the Vales of
earth and all mankind will be given love and knowledge by a portion of the
blessedness’ (ll. 253-256), through which they will overcome human mortality.
At the end of the poem, the poet offers a condensed form of summary for hope
against suffering which reminds us of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.
The poet would sing the songs for ‘Hope for this earth and hope beyond the
grave--:
Of blessed consolations in distress,
Of joy in widest commonalty spread,
Of the individual mind that keeps its own
Inviolate retirement, and consists
With being limitless the one great Life- (ll. 965-971)
Although human life is overshadowed by the experience of suffering and loss,
the poet attempts to write a song for hope, which reassures us of the
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consolation of immortality in the context of ‘the one great Life’.
2.4. ‘The one great Life’ and ‘one Household under God’
If the idea of the one great life enables the poet to reconcile himself to
mortality, the question arises what kind of relationship the idea develops with
the notion of dwelling. Offering us an idealized picture of dwelling in Home at
Grasmere, Wordsworth declares, ‘dear Vale, / One of thy lowly dwellings is my
home’ (ll. 52-3). First of all, he stresses the significance of this place as a
locality and a physical geography within the context of a natural environment.
For Wordsworth, this dwelling-place is neither a ‘mere place in respite from the
fragmented restlessness of modern life’, nor ‘a symbol of a utopian existence’,
but is ‘a choice of the whole heart’: not ‘a weak indulgence’ but ‘an act of
reason that exultingly aspires’ (ll. 78-82).55 One of the elements which explains
this firm determination to choose this particular spot as a home can be found in
his memory of childhood. The poem opens on a scene in his memory which
refers to the first time the poet as ‘a School-boy’ overlooked the vale of
Grasmere, and he remembers his passionate yearning for this place as a home:
‘What happy fortune were it here to live!’ (ll. 9); ‘For rest of body ‘twas a
perfect place’ (ll. 22); ‘here / Should be my home, this Valley be my World’ (ll.
42-3). Further, in a letter to Lady Beaumont in November 1805, Dorothy
recollects John’s visit to the new house in Grasmere in 1800, during which he
‘paced over this floor in pride before we had been six weeks in the house,
exulting within his noble heart that his Father’s Children had once again a home
55
Karl Kroeber, ‘“Home at Grasmere”: Ecological Holiness’, PMLA, 89 (1974), 132-141 (p. 134).
182
together’.56 In the poem Wordsworth also mentions briefly that John, ‘a neverresting Pilgrim of the Sea’, ‘finds at last an hour to his content / Beneath our
roof’, and he describes the union of his siblings as ‘a happy band!’ in a ‘Vale of
Peace’ (ll. 866-8, 873-4). In this sense, this particular spot, as an element of
physical geography, enables the poet to maintain the continuity of the self
between the past and the present.
This place for a home needs to be understood in terms of a physical
geography and a natural environment. As ‘From that time forward was the place
to me / As beautiful in thought as it had been / When present to my bodily eyes’
(ll. 44-6), the natural beauty of the place is important to the poet. His
experience and perception of life in an urban space shattered the peace and joy
in dwelling, but the natural environment in Grasmere enabled him to create an
ideal place for dwelling. He discovered a sense of ‘peace’ and ‘gladness’ in the
‘soft and gay and beautiful’ vale of Grasmere (ll. 134). This dwelling place
provided a sense of safety to the extent that ‘What once was deemed so
difficult is now / Smooth, easy, without obstacle’ (ll. 75-6). Likewise, in Tintern
Abbey, Wordsworth confesses that he has ‘owed to the forms of beauty’ in
nature the overcoming of the sense of ‘loneliness’ and ‘weariness’ in ‘towns and
cities’ and the experiencing of ‘tranquil restoration’ (ll. 31). The process by
which nature lightens ‘the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible
world’ (ll. 40-41) implies that nature is associated with the mind as a corporeal
landscape. That is, the outward forms of nature stimulate the senses and create
‘sensations sweet’ which are ‘felt in the blood and ‘along the heart’ and finally
56
WL I, p. 649.
183
reach into the mind (ll. 28-30). Accordingly, the sense of locality and the
physical geography of this particular spot need to be underlined.
The reason for underlining the physicality of the dwelling place in
Grasmere is that, for Wordsworth, the relational aspect between the place and
the dweller is of great significance, but the physical dimension is often regarded
as a mere projection of the mind by critics. I want to stress that the physical
geography of a particular spot matters in the formulation of a dwelling place. In
developing the idea of dwelling, the poet reveals the significance of the intimate
relationship between dwellers and their natural environment. As he defines the
theme of the poem as ‘on Man, on Nature, and on human Life’ (ll. 959), he
shows us that he is attempting to build the notion of dwelling by integrating
diverse elements into one single unity. Moreover, in Home at Grasmere, he
describes a kind of interpersonal relationship between humanity and nature,
which live together not in a hierarchical sense, but in a reciprocal way. If we
look at the process of his settling in this place, we see him as the beneficiary in
this natural environment as he is given a safe place over and against the cold
‘Realities of Life’. He tries to build an ‘I-Thou’ relationship with the place,
rather than ‘I-It’, by personifying the vale and asking it to ‘Embrace me then, ye
Hill, and close me in’ (ll. 129). Instead of occupying the place by simple choice,
the poet is willing to let the place accept him as a dweller:
[. . .] Grasmere, our dear Vale,
Received us. Bright and solemn was the sky
That faced us with a passionate welcoming
And led us to our threshold, to a home
Within a home [. . .] (ll. 258-262)
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‘A home Within a home’ implies that Grasmere itself becomes a home, and the
vale as home offers a sense of safety by ‘concealing us from the storm’ (ll. 456).
Therefore he feels ‘enclosed / To breathe in peace’ ‘under Nature’s care’ and
‘guardianship’ (ll. 854-5, 753, 131). Further, their relationship deepens through
love: ‘It loves us now, this Vale so beautiful / Begins to love us!’ (ll. 268-9).
In return for the loving care the vale shows to the poet, he acknowledges
the intrinsic value of the place. He endorses the sacredness of the vale in that
the dwellers are already ‘blessed’ owing to ‘this holy place’ (ll. 366-369). We
should not despise ‘this lowly dwelling’ (ll. 53) because:
Each Being has his office, lowly some
And common, yet all worthy if fulfilled
With zeal, acknowledgement that with the gift
Keeps pace a harvest answering to the seed. (ll. 880-883)
The poet urges us to ‘love all gentle things’ (ll. 943). Further, his knowledge of
this place grows as he becomes familiar with the inner life of the natural
environment as well as its appearances. Although he is a ‘Newcomer’, he notes
that ‘the inward frame opens every day’; ‘Though slowly opening’ (ll. 693-5).
‘As it unfolds itself, now here, now there’, the poet enriches his understanding
of ‘this fair Valley’s self’ (ll. 697, 700). In this respect, the poet and the vale
develop an interpersonal relationship by interpenetrating each other in that he
opens himself to the fullness and care of the vale, and at the same time it also
185
opens its inward frame to him every day.57
The growth of the mind plays a key role in appreciating the intrinsic value
of such a natural environment. If we look at the Pedlar and Tintern Abbey, too,
we see that the transformative experience of coming to understand the one life
is not limited to the unity of a static understanding, but has to do with feeling
and perception. What changes is not the person or nature, but the way of
feeling and seeing in the visionary experiences. In The Pedlar, the pedlar
perceives ‘the moral properties and scope of things’ (ll. 162-163) and gives ‘a
moral life’ to ‘every natural form, rock, fruit, and flower, even the loose stones
that cover the highway’ (ll. 80-82, The Ruined Cottage). There is nothing
unimportant in nature because even ‘the least of things seem’d infinite’ (ll. 220221). In a similar vein, the poet, in Tintern Abbey, confesses:
[. . . ] I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity, (ll. 89-92)
The visionary experience enabled him to see nature in a different perspective,
and therefore he came to recognise the intrinsic value of nature in relation to
the ethical or spiritual aspect of nature and the preciousness of little things. In
other words, it opened the eye of the mind in terms of an epistemological
dimension through which he could ‘see into the life of thing’ (ll. 50). The pedlar
and the poet re-establish their relationship with nature through mystical
experience by discovering the intrinsic value of the natural environment.
57
Kroeber, ‘“Home at Grasmere”’ pp. 134, 137.
186
In the long run, the poet is able to discover an alternative ‘Society’, ‘The
True community, the noblest Frame / Of many into one incorporate’ (ll. 818820) in the vale of Grasmere, and describes this community as ‘one Household
under God for high and low, one family and one mansion’ (ll. 822-823). The
thought of ‘one Household under God’ epitomizes Wordsworth’s idea of dwelling.
For him, to dwell means to foster a reciprocal relationship between a dweller
and a natural environment in the one life. The interrelatedness between the
dweller and a dwelling place deepens their bond to the extent that the poet can
locate the sense of self-completeness in the beautiful natural surroundings. For
him, ‘this small abiding-place of many men’ in the valley of Grasmere is:
A Centre, come from wheresoe’er you will,
A Whole without dependence or defect,
Made for itself and happy in itself,
Perfect Contentment, Unity entire. (ll. 167-170).
Nothing is wanting in the valley because everything is there, and ‘it is
indivisibly self-unified.’58 The poet thus perceives the unity of the dwellers and
‘the topographical actuality of the valley’ in Grasmere, which represents ‘one
Household’.59
In his Wordsworth and the Poetry of What we are, Paul Fry declares that
the works of Wordsworth do not reflect a radical subjectivity or egotism but are
concerned with the ‘ontological’ unity of the human and the nonhuman, or of us
58
59
Kroeber, ‘“Home at Grasmere”’, p. 133.
Ibid., p. 133.
187
and the rest of the world. 60 Discussing the relationship between human
consciousness and all nonhuman things in the ‘Preface’, Fry claims that the
ontic unity is not ‘the reinforcement of human self-importance by nonhuman
analogs’, but ‘the disclosure to human reflection of the nonhuman unity, perhaps
also the spiritual unity, of all somatic existence’. 61 It is noteworthy that the
poetry of Wordsworth, rather than creating, ‘discloses the unity constituted by
and as the being, apart from meaning and apart even from difference, of all
human and nonhuman things’.62 What Wordsworth discovers is ‘the revelation of
being itself in the nonhumanity that “we” share with the nonhuman universe.’63
Accordingly, the unity between the dwellers and ‘the topographical actuality of
the valley’ in Grasmere is based not on a sheer subjective experience, but on
the poet’s awareness of the reciprocal relationship between them.
What I would particularly add to Fry’s account is the religious aspect of
dwelling. We have seen that Home at Grasmere is resonant with fears and
anxieties about death and the inhuman nature of city-life, but the poet tries to
deal with them through the experience of the one life. The notion of the one life
shows his awareness of how he is interrelated with nature and with God. In
particular, the sense of the one life convinces him of faith in immortality
‘beyond the grave’, which is based upon the immanence of God in nature.
Because of this faith, the poet can finally build up a dwelling place in the vale of
Grasmere with a sense of safety and peace and joy over and against any
60
Paul H. Fry, Wordsworth and the Poetry of What We are (New Haven; London: Yale UP, 2008),
p. 6.
61
Ibid., pp. 55-56.
62
Ibid., p. 9
63
Ibid., p. x.
188
anxieties. As he proclaims ‘Great God’ as ‘breath and being, way and guide,
power and understanding’ (ll. 1042-1044), the thought of ‘one Household’ is
revealed to be dependent upon the immanence of God. In this respect, for
Wordsworth, the notion of the one life is associated with a psychological and
spiritual space as well as a physical space in dwelling.
3. Dwelling in the community of the living and the dead
3.1. A fresh challenge from human mortality
In the previous section we have seen that Home At Grasmere is a kind of
eulogy or manifesto for an ideal of dwelling, in which humanity, nature, and God
are interrelated with one another. In this poem, Wordsworth appears to
reconcile himself with the reality of loss and death to the extent that he can find
peace and harmony in his new dwelling, Grasmere, trusting in the hope of
eternal life. But in his works after the eulogy he still return to an anxiety about
home in the sense that Wordsworth keeps conjuring up images of loss and
wandering. In particular, he is seen struggling with the experience of death in a
very profound way, even during his adult life. Although the death of his parents
left the boy a painful memory, he later had to face a fresh challenge from the
bitter reality of death due to the death of his brother John and two children.
In the middle and late 1800s, Wordsworth was exhaustively tested in terms
of ‘the faith that looks through death’.64 His brother, John, a ship’s captain, was
drowned at sea in 1805, and his daughter Catherine died of convulsions at the
age of three in June in 1812, while his son Thomas, six and a half years old,
64
‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’, ll. 188.
189
died of pneumonia in December of the same year. Wordsworth wrote some
letters and poems about these deaths that express his intense feelings of
unbearable
sorrow and
pain.
They
not only express
a
collection
of
heartbreaking emotions, but allow us to catch a glimpse of his changing
perspectives on the relationship between humanity, nature, and God within the
context of dwelling. First of all, in his letters, Wordsworth conveys the sense
that his stable family in a loved place seems to be broken apart: ‘the set is now
broken’; ‘God keep the rest of us together’.65 It reminds one of Wordsworth’s
childhood experience of separation after the death of his parents. With the
death of Catherine, Wordsworth recognises that he is struggling not only with
sorrow but with uncertainty: ‘I write with a full heart; with some sorrow, but
most oppressed by an awful sense of the uncertainty and instability of all human
things’.66 The awareness of ‘an awful sense of the uncertainty and instability of
all human things’ alludes to his overall spiritual crisis in his understanding of
life.67 Although he had had the experience of losing his parents in his childhood,
the death of John and his children appears to represent a new challenge to
Wordsworth, as a husband, father, and brother. When the death of John and the
two children shattered the peace and harmony of his dwelling, he became
conscious of the mutability or fragility of his own human efforts. He was aware
of how vulnerable to death and loss his happy dwelling was. If he was yearning
65
WL I, p. 540; in another letter, he mentions that ‘For myself I feel that there is something cut
out of my life which cannot be restored’, WL I, p. 565.
66
WL III, p. 25.
67
Thomas McFarland reads John Wordsworth’s death in 1805 off Portland Bill as the crisis that
definitively cast the poet ‘back upon his final defense: stoicism’, associated with the defensively
‘egotistical sublime’, Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin, 148; quoted by Kurt Fosso, Buried
Communities: Wordsworth and the Bonds of Mourning (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2004), p. 194.
190
for just another home after the death of his parents in his childhood, the death
of John and his two children made him perceive the unreliability and
unpredictability of the earthly home itself. Accordingly, for the poet, ‘all human
things’ seemed to be unstable and uncertain. Yet, if we look at Essays Upon
Epitaphs and Books V, VI and VII of The Excursion, we discover that
Wordsworth tries to overcome this spiritual crisis by reaffirming the idea of
immortality.
3.2. Paul de Man and Essays Upon Epitaphs
In recent decades, critics have tended to see Wordsworth’s epitaphic
writings from a deconstructive perspective, focusing on ‘the gap between the
sheer materiality of the inscribed epitaph, figuring the textuality of writing, and
the absence of the author, associated with the absent dead’. 68 For them,
epitaphs open up a gap between signifier and signified, text and the human
presence. In his ‘Autobiography as De-Facement’, Paul de Man investigates the
relationship between language and mortality in Essays Upon Epitaphs and points
to the unbridgeable gap between them. Presupposing that the essays are forms
of autobiography, de Man argues that ‘Wordsworth’s claim for restoration in the
face of death, in the Essays Upon Epitaphs, is grounded in a consistent system’:
‘a system of mediations that converts the radical distance of an either / or
opposition in a process allowing movement from one extreme to the other by a
series of transformations that leave the negativity of the (or lack of
68
See Scott Hess, ‘Wordsworth’s Epitaphic Poetics and the Print Market’, Studies in Romanticism,
50 (2011), 55-78 (p. 55). Douglas Kneale, Monumental Writing: Aspects of Rhetoric in
Wordsworth’s Writing (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), see, xviii. Frances Ferguson,
Wordsworth: Langauge as Counter-Spirit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977).
191
relationship) intact. One moves, without compromise, from death or life to life
and death’. 69 Yet, for de Man, language as ‘trope’ and ‘figure’ is ‘always
private’, and it is ‘not the thing itself but the representation, the picture of the
thing’. Just as the pictures are ‘mute’, so this language is ‘mute’. Accordingly,
our
dependence
upon
this
language
in
writing
implies
‘the
possible
manifestation of sound at our own will’.70 Although the essays try to construct
‘a sequence of mediations between incompatibles: body and grave’, any
correlation between them is invalidated by the fact that ‘the shape and the
sense of a world’ is ‘accessible only in the private way of understanding’. De
Man thus claims that ‘death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament, and
the restoration of mortality by autobiography deprives and disfigures to the
precise extent that it restores’. 71 In a nutshell, for de Man, Essays Upon
Epitaphs are a sheer self-restoration which cannot go beyond the poetic self.
But for Wordsworth, epitaphs are not mere rhetoric without human
presence, but a core element which ‘restores a sense of broken community’ by
linking the living with the dead.72 In other words, they enable the poet to relocate his dwelling place in terms of the relationship between the living
community, the dead, nature, and immortality. In the process, we should
consider the continuing importance of ideas of the one life to his writing in this
period, even if critics have tended to overlook this when discussing the later
poetry and prose. Admittedly, his way of dealing with mortality in Essays Upon
69
Paul de Man, ‘Autobiography as De-Facement,’ in The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1984), pp. 67-81 (p. 74).
70
Ibid., p. 80.
71
Ibid., p. 81.
72
Lorna Clymer, ‘Graved in Tropes: The Figural Logic of Epitaphs and Elegies in Blair, Gray,
Cowper, and Wordsworth’, ELH, 62 (1995), 347-386 (pp. 350-351).
192
Epitaphs is different, for instance, from that in The Pedlar. On the one hand, in
the latter, he seeks consolation over and against the reality of mortality through
the experience of the one life, but the dead are not considered as being
included in the dwelling. On the other hand, in the former, he tries to reestablish the idea of the dwelling by making the dead part of his dwelling, rather
than being separated from the living, through a relational dynamic. Accordingly,
it can be claimed that the vanishing of the idea of the one life does not mean
that Wordsworth rejected it; rather he continued to search for an ideal place for
dwelling by investigating how the world is interrelated.
3.3. Immortality, language, and the permanence of the epitaph
During the period of The Pedlar and Home At Grasmere, Wordsworth refers
to the idea of immortality, but it is in Essays Upon Epitaphs (1810) and The
Excursion (1814) that he provides us with a comprehensive account of
immortality in relation to death.73 In the first essay of his Essays Upon Epitaphs,
he suggests that ‘the desire to live in the remembrance of his fellows’ and to
remember others is due to ‘the consciousness of a principle of immortality in
the human soul’. 74 He regards immortality as a built-in idea in human
consciousness in the sense that it is ‘implanted in all men naturally’.75 Then he
associates the idea of immortality with the act of writing, which produces
epitaphs. He argues that ‘as soon as nations had learned the use of letter, the
73
The first ‘Essay upon Epitaphs’ appeared originally, without Wordsworth’s name, as a stop-gap
essay in Coleridge’s The Friend for 22 February 1810, see ‘Introduction: General’, in E.E., p. 45.
74
E.E., p. 50.
75
Ibid., p. 50.
193
epitaphs were inscribed upon these monuments’ for immortality.76 Accordingly,
epitaphs manifest the human compulsion to perpetuate life even after death
through inscriptions.
The language of immortality in these inscriptions is the reincarnation of the
human beings, who are to be remembered in epitaphs. For Wordsworth,
language plays a key role in connecting the source with its final destination. In
his trope of a ‘running stream’ in a permanent state of ‘influx’, language is
conceived as the very ‘receptacle’ of ‘the mighty influx’ ‘without bounds or
dimensions’, aspiring towards ‘infinity’. 77 If we compare the journey of the
immortal soul to the mighty influx of a running stream, human language can be
understood as the vehicle of the journey. As language becomes an intermediary
of the stream between the beginning and the end, it becomes boundlessly or
limitlessly a mediator of the soul’s journey before and after death.
In this respect, for Wordsworth, language and death are deeply interrelated
with each other. Even after death, the soul will return through language in the
form of epitaph. In the third essay, the poet argues that language is the
incarnation of the thought:
They [words] hold above all other external powers a dominion over
thoughts. If words be not (recurring to a metaphor before used) an
incarnation of the thought but only a clothing for it, then they surely will
76
Ibid., p. 50.
‘Never did a child stand by the side of a running stream, pondering within himself what power
was the feeder of the perpetual current, from what never-wearied sources the body of water was
supplied, but he must have been inevitably propelled to follow this question by another: “Towards
what abyss is it in progress? What receptacle can contain the mighty influx?” And the spirit of the
answer must have been, though the word might be sea or ocean, accompanied perhaps with an
image gathered from a map, or from the real object in nature-these might have been the letter,
but the spirit of the answer must have been as inevitably, - a receptacle without bounds or
dimensions; - nothing less than infinity’, E.E., p. 51.
77
194
prove an ill gift [. . .] Language, if it do not uphold, and feed, and leave in
quiet, like the power of gravitation or the air we breathe, is a counterspirit, unremittingly and noiselessly at work to derange, to subvert, to lay
waste, to vitiate, and to dissolve.78
The metaphor of language as clothing for thought was common in neo-classical
poetics, but Wordsworth rejects it, choosing to see ‘words’ as ‘incarnation’
rather than ‘clothing’. 79 In his fourth essay on Style (1841), De Quincey,
referring to Wordsworth’s metaphor of incarnation for thought, maintains that ‘if
language were merely a dress, then you could separate the two’. But the union
of language and thought is ‘too subtle, the intertexture too ineffable, - each coexisting not merely with the other, but each in and through the other’. Thus ‘the
two elements are not united as a body with a separable dress, but as a
mysterious incarnation.’80 If a word can enter into a thought as a constituent
part, ‘the incarnation of thought made into a word about decaying flesh directs
attention to the reincarnation of human beings to be memorialized in the form of
the epitaph’.81 As a result, the dead can be immortalized by the inscription of
the epitaph, which is a very particular kind of incarnation of thought.
Given that a desire for remembering the dead is implanted naturally in
human beings and the inscription of the epitaph is the incarnation, rather than
clothing, of this desire, Wordsworth holds that the epitaph reveals the sense of
permanence and immortality in conjunction with the mortality of human beings.
78
E.E., pp. 84-85.
79
For example, ‘expression’ was regarded as ‘the dress of thought’, see ‘Commentary’, in E. E.,
p. 114.
80
De Quincey, ‘On Style’, in Collected Writings, ed. by Masson, x (Edinburgh, 1890), p. 300;
quoted in ‘Commentary’, in E.E., p. 115.
81
Dewey W. Hall, ‘Signs of the Dead: Epitaphs, Inscriptions, and the Discourse of the Dead’, ELH,
68 (2001), 655-677 (p. 660).
195
He emphasises the ‘permanence’ of the inscription itself by contrasting it with
the ephemeral ‘funeral oration or elegiac poem’ which produce transitory
‘weakness and anguish of sorrow’. 82 Here what matters is the relationship
between the permanence of the epitaph and the idea of dwelling. For
Wordsworth, the permanence of the epitaph serves not only the dead, but also
the living in that he appears to re-formulate the idea of dwelling through the
location of the epitaph for those who still live there.
First of all, the permanence of the epitaph reassures people of immortality
over and against the darkness and fear of death, which threatens the stability of
dwelling. As the writings about the death of John and his two children imply,
Wordsworth is struggling with uncertainty as well as the sorrow of loss. When
the poet emphasises the immortality of the human soul through the permanence
of the epitaph, he attains two objects. The epitaph enables him to recognise that
the dead do not disappear completely but continue to dwell in their final home,
and at the same time it releases him from the uncertainty of human mortality.
‘The departed Mortal is telling the people that his pains are gone; that a state of
rest is come; and he conjures them to weep for him no longer.’ 83 In The
Excursion, death is described as a ‘vivid promise, bright as spring’, as well as
being ‘cold, sullen and blank’ (V. ll. 556). The Pastor claims that:
Life, I repeat, is energy of Love
Divine or human; exercised in pain,
In strife, and tribulation; and ordained,
If so approved and sanctified, to pass,
82
E.E., pp. 59-60.
83
Ibid., p. 60.
196
Through shades and silent rest, to endless joy. (Book V, ll. 1018 – 1022)
Although human life goes through the darkness of death, it is ‘the channel’ to
‘endless joy’. Wordsworth describes how ‘the contemplative Soul’, as if ‘sailing
upon the orb of this planet’ from west to east, ‘travels in the direction of
mortality and advances to the country of everlasting life’. 84 In the long run,
death with ‘twofold aspect’ points to faith in immortality as well as to the pain
of mortality, through which the living can attain the stability of dwelling,
threatened by the darkness of death.
3.4. Religion and the idea of immortality
For Wordsworth, the idea of immortality is not just poetic imagination or
philosophical reasoning, but a religious faith. The poet pronounces the epitaph
‘a humble expression of Christian confidence in immortality’, and the faith in
immortality described by the pastor in the Excursion is also explicitly
Christian. 85 But it is debatable whether he accepted Christian faith wholeheartedly during this period. If we look at the poems and letters concerning the
death of his brother and his children, we find that they display a rich mixture of
suffering and surrendering. The death of his brother John is reflected in the
‘Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle’ (Poems in Two
Volumes, 1807):
I have submitted to a new controul:
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
84
85
Ibid., p. 53.
Ibid., p. 56.
197
A deep distress hath humaniz’d my Soul. (ll. 34-36)
Yet, he declares that ‘the feeling of my loss will ne’er be old’, and he closes the
poem with the juxtaposition of hope and pain: ‘Not without hope we suffer and
we mourn’ (ll. 39, 60). After the death of Thomas in 1812, Wordsworth wrote to
Southey that ‘For myself dear Southey I dare not say in what state of mind I am
[. . .] yet in the agony of my spirit in surrendering such a treasure I feel a
thousand times richer than if I had never possessed it’.86 He seems to suffer
from the loss, paradoxically, as much as he surrenders presumably to ‘a new
controul’ with hope.
With regard to the juxtaposition of suffering and surrendering, critics have
pointed rightly to the ambivalence of his religious faith during the period of the
death of his brother and two children. According to Ryan, the poet’s decision to
rejoin the Church of England was more like a pledge of allegiance than a
confession of faith on the grounds that Christian doctrine gave him comfort
after the death of John, but he seems to have been struggling toward a
confident assurance of an afterlife as late as 1805.
87
Intriguingly, The
Excursion conveys a tension between faith and doubt through multiple points of
view. Although the didactic narrative of the Pastor dominates Book V, VI and
VII of the poem, the unresolved pessimistic view of the Solitary ‘unsettles the
86
WL III, p. 51.
87
Robert M. Ryan, The Romantic Reformation: Religious Politics in English Literature, 1789 –
1824 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 98; Also, in a letter to Sir George
Beaumont in March 1805 concerning his struggling with the suffering from the death of his
brother John, Wordsworth says that ‘Would it be blasphemy to say that upon the supposition of
the thinking principle being destroyed by death, however inferior we may be to the great Cause
and ruler of things, we have more of love in our Nature than he has? The thought is monstrous;
and yet how to get rid of it except upon the supposition of another and a better world I do not
see’, WL I, p. 556.
198
absolute claim of any one speaker’.88 Sharp suggests that ‘The Excursion has
no universally authorized poet or reader’.89 Referring to this unsettled ending of
the poem, Gill also sees The Excursion ‘not as a confessio fidei, but as an
exploration of faith’.90
Although it seems that Wordsworth examines, rather than believes
sincerely, his exploration indicates something of the way he begins to see
another aspect of God. In The Pedlar and Home At Grasmere the poet focuses
on the immanence of God, present within the world, but now he begins to look
at the transcendence of God by which He may exist beyond the world. It will be
seen that Wordsworth eventually in his later years committed himself to the
idea of heavenly dwelling. Yet, one of the key points in dealing with religion in
Wordsworth is how to understand the relationship between the pantheistic
tendency in the early years and the more doctrine-oriented attitude in later
years. There is a danger of claiming that Wordsworth had two different sets of
notions about God. But it should be stressed that his growing interest in the
transcendence of God does not exclude a belief in the immanence of God.
Likewise, his searching for the immortality of the soul during this period does
not mean that he neglected the idea of the earthly dwelling, but rather enabled
him to re-formulate the idea within the context of death.
3.5. The community of the living and the dead
88
Susan J. Wolfson, The Questioning Presence: Wordsworth, Keats, and the Interrogative Mode
in Romantic Poetry (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1986), p. 124.
89
Michele Turner Sharp, ‘The Churchyard among the Wordsworthian Mountains: Mapping the
Common Ground of Death and the Reconfiguration of Romantic Community’, ELH, 62 (1995), 387407 (p. 403).
90
Gill, William Wordsworth, p. 295.
199
With his presupposition of the immortality of the soul, Wordsworth recreates the ideal of dwelling by associating the dead with both the living and
nature. For him, the dead do not disappear completely from the community after
their death, but they become part of the community in terms of locality, emotion,
and morality. Wordsworth even alludes to ‘communion between living and dead’
in the sense that they share a common dwelling place.91 In ‘We are seven’, an
eight-year-old girl understands that both the living and the dead are part of a
community. A man encounters a little cottage girl and asks her how many family
members she has. She replies:
‘Seven are we,
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother,
And in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother.’ (ll. 18-24)
Then the adult tries to correct her by reminding her that two are dead.
However, she explains how she still regards her two dead siblings as part of
her dwelling. For her, they are not separated from those living on the grounds
that ‘Their graves are green’; ‘Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door’;
‘My stockings there I often knit’; ‘I sit and sing to them’; ‘And eat my supper
there’ (ll. 37, 39, 41, 44, 48). Whereas the man demarcates a clear boundary
between the living and the dead, this little girl continues to develop an intimate
relationship with the dead in terms of locality, emotion and sharing.
91
E.E., p. 66.
200
In the Excursion, the graves are often described not as a cold and dark
lifeless place, but as home or ‘habitation’ (Book VI, ll. 116, 219) in peace and
holiness. Referring to a vivid Jacobite and a sullen Hanoverian, the Pastor also
perceives the Church-yard:
The visible quiet of this holy ground
And breathed its soothing air; -the Spirit of hope
And saintly magnanimity (Book VI, ll. 498-500)
As the deaf man was carried ‘from his home / (Yon Cottage shaded by the
woody crags) / To the profound stillness of the grave’ (Book VII, ll. 483-485),
the act of dying, to some extent, is the act of moving from one home to another
home. 92 The graves, as other homes, are ‘around the dwelling place for the
living’ (Book V, ll. 649), and thus the dwelling places for living and dead are
brought together. In addition, Wordsworth mentions that the bones of the people
who died away from home are transferred to their community in order to ‘rest
by the side of their forefathers’.93 The implication is that the dead one, rather
than being separated completely from the living, remains part of the community
in terms of dwelling place.
The bond between living and dead is developed further through the channel
of emotion. For Wordsworth, ‘the general sympathy’, created by the epitaphs, is
based upon ‘love-the joint offspring of the worth of the dead and the affections
92
Sally Bushell also suggests that in the Excursion death is ‘seen as nothing more threatening
than a change of dwelling place’, ‘Exempla in the Excursion: the Purpose of the Pastor’s Epitaphic
Tales’, Charles Lamb Bulletin, 10 (2009), 16-27 (p. 26).
93
E.E., p. 66. Interestingly, Sharp mentions that Wordsworth’s argument about moving the bones
implies ‘a critique of the various economic forces that would have given rise to this general
transfer of inhabitants from one locale to another, or even worse, from village to city, see, Sharp,
‘The Churchyard among the Wordsworthian Mountains’, p. 391.
201
of the living!’. 94 The emotions of the living play a key role in forming their
relationship with the dead. At the same time, this emotional response brings
people together: ‘they suffer and they weep with the same heart; they love and
are anxious for one another in one spirit’.95 Critics, including Sally Bushel, Kurt
Fosso, Michele Turner Sharp, and Lorna Clymer, have recently discussed how
the culture of mourning contributes to the establishment of the relationship
between the dead and the living, and between the people in a community.96
In this respect, we ascribe the despondency and seclusion of the Solitary in
The Excursion to his troubled mourning. The history he narrates about the
death of his two children and wife discloses how he has displaced mourning.
Referring to the death of his wife, he mentions that he ‘suffers now, not seldom,
from the thought / That I remember, and can weep no more-‘ (Book III, ll. 494495). Then he proclaims:
[. . .] my business is,
Roaming at large, to observe, and not to feel;
And, therefore, not to act-convinced that all
Which bears the name of action, howsoe’er
Beginning, ends in servitude-still painful,
And mostly profitless. (Book III, ll. 899-904)
His refusal to feel reveals his way of escaping from loss, grief and ‘Mutability,
94
E.E., pp. 57-58.
95
Ibid., p. 59.
See, Sally Bushel, Re-Reading The Excursion: Narrative, response and the Wordsworthian
dramtic voice (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), p. 165. Kurt Fosso, Buried Communites: Wordsworth
and the Bonds of Mourning (Albany: State University of New York, 2004). Michele Turner Sharp,
‘The Churchyard among the Wordsworthian Mountains: Mapping the Common Ground of Death
and the Reconfiguration of Romantic Community’, ELH, 62 (1995), 387-407. Lorna Clymer,
‘Graved in Tropes: The Figural Logic of Epitaphs and Elegies in Blair, Gray, Cowper, and
Wordsworth’, ELH, 62 (1995), 347-386.
96
202
which is Nature’s bane’ (Book III, ll. 465). Interestingly, this displacing of
mourning reminds us of the delayed mourning in The Vale of Esthwaite, where
the narrator, as we discussed earlier, was able to relieve his soul from grief by
‘paying the mighty debt of Grief’ (ll. 287). The Solitary’s ‘yearning for reclusion
from attachment’, as Fosso holds, is ‘owed not just to these painful feelings of
mortal loss’ but ‘to grief over his mourning’s premature cessation, to his
mourning of mourning’. 97 For Wordsworth, emotion becomes one of the key
channels through which the dead and the living can develop their relationship.
In addition to the ideas of immortality and mourning, graves also have a
moral influence upon the living. In the eighteenth century the social
consciousness of remembering the dead was recognised in terms of morality. In
his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke had suggested that
social affection is dependent upon the connection between the dead and the
living in that the monuments ‘keep a durable record of all our acts’.98 Examining
the association of Wordsworth’s poetry of epitaph and English burial reform,
Karen Sánchez-Eppler shows that the reformers’ stance on the relocation and
renovation of England’s cemeteries was variously reinforced by ‘a newly voiced
need to protect the repose of the dead, and the notion that the graveyard should
be a place of moral edification’.99 She also mentions William Godwin’s comment
that the mere act of ‘Erecting Some Memorial of the Illustrious Dead [. . .] on
the Spot where their Remains have been Interred’ would have ‘moral uses [. . .]
97
Fosso, Buried Communities, p. 209.
Edmund Burke, ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’, in The Writings and Speeches of
Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII: The French Revolution, 1790-1794, ed. by L. G. Mitchell (Oxford:
Claredon Press, 1989), pp. 53-293 (p. 21). Quoted by Stuard Allen, ‘Wordsworth, Death and
Politics’, Literature Compass, 1 (2004), 1-4 (p. 1).
99
Karen Sánchez-Eppler, ‘Decomposing: Wordsworth’s Poetry of Epitaph and English Burial
Reform’, in Nineteenth-Century Literature, 42 (1988), 415-431 (p. 416).
98
203
of no common magnitude’.100 Likewise, Wordsworth evokes the moral influence
of the graves on the living. In a footnote to his first Essay, Wordsworth
criticises Dr. Johnson’s thought that ‘to define an Epitaph is useless; everyone
knows that it is an inscription on a Tomb. An Epitaph, therefore, implies no
particular character of writing’.101 Wordsworth, however, reveals the historical
role of graves and epitaphs within the moral constitution of the community in
that ‘epitaphs personate the deceased and represent him as speaking from his
own tomb-stone’:
He admonishes with the voice of one experienced in the vanity of those
affections which are confined to earthly objects, and gives a verdict like a
superior Being, performing the office of a judge.102
Wordsworth thus recognises ‘a parish-church’ as ‘a visible centre of a
community of the living and the dead’ where ‘the sensations of pious
cheerfulness, which attend the celebration of the Sabbath-day, are profitably
chastised by the sight of the graves of kindred and friend’.103
In Books VI and VII of The Excursion, the stories of the unmarked dead in
the vale also inspire a moral message. Most of all, the Pastor’s act of
recounting the stories is ‘a positive and communicative act, creating new links
between the living’ and the dead. 104 His oratory has an effective power to
evoke a living narrative in the memories of others. In his ‘admiring description
100
William Godwin, Essay on Sepulchres: or, A Proposal for Erecting Some Memorial of the
Illustrious Dead of All Ages on the Spot where their Remains have been Interred (London: 1809),
p. 91. Quoted by Sánchez-Eppler, ‘Decomposing’, p. 417.
101
E.E., p. 49.
102
Ibid., p. 60.
103
Ibid., pp. 55-56.
104
Bushell, ‘Exempla in the Excursion’, p. 26.
204
of the Pastor as narrator’, Charles Lamb pointed out how, in particular, the
environmental context of his oratory generates a sense of the connection
between life and death:
Nothing can be conceived finer than the manner of introducing these tales.
With heaven above his head, and the mouldering turf at his feet – standing
betwixt life and death – he seems to maintain that spiritual relation which
he bore to his living flock, in its undiminished strength, even with their
ashes.105
By bringing back various memories of the dead through his narrative, the Pastor
attempts to re-connect the living with the dead in terms of moral implications.
He provides a number of stories about the dead who were poor and rich,
powerful and marginalized, virtuous and wicked, friends and opponents, and
draws the same conclusion from them all: that human beings share their
mortality in common. After hearing the tales, the grey-haired Wanderer
exclaims:
So fails, so languishes, grows dim, and dies,
All that this Word is proud of. From their spheres
The stars of human glory are cast down;
Perish the roses and the flowers of Kings,
Princes and Emperors, and the crowns and palms
Of all the Mighty, withered and consumed!
Nor is power given to lowliest Innocence
Long to protect her won. The Man himself
Departs; (Book VII, ll. 998-1007)
105
Charles Lamb, ‘The Excursion; a Poem’, Quarterly Review, 12 (October 1814), 100-111 (p.
108). Quoted by Bushell, ‘Exempla in the Excursion’, p. 26.
205
This response is resonant with the sense of the transitoriness of human life,
and therefore the graves become ‘a warning for a thoughtless Man’ (Book VI, ll.
824). For instance, the Pastor recounts a story about a woman who was often
sent abroad and lost her child, and reminds us that
[. . .] for not only she bewailed
A Mother’s loss, but mourned in bitterness
Her own transgression; Penitent sincere
As ever raised to Heaven a streaming eye. (Book VI, ll. 1009 – 1012)
In this respect, the dead become part of dwelling with the living ‘in memory and
for warning’ (Book VI, ll. 1103).
3.6. The relationship between nature and the graveyard
We have seen how nature is a crucial part of dwelling in The Pedlar and
Home At Grasmere in terms of the immanence of God, its beauty, and its
reciprocal relationship with the dwellers. It continues to play a key role in
Wordsworth’s reformulation of the idea of dwelling in association with the dead.
As an idealized community stands in a close relationship to nature within the
context of the natural environment, Wordsworth recognises the significance of
nature in the location of the graveyard. Allocating several pages in the first
‘Essays’ to an examination of burial practices from ancient times to the present,
Wordsworth presents a striking contrast between a large town and the
countryside with regard to the place of epitaphs:
206
Let a man only compare in imagination the unsightly manner in which our
monuments are crowded together in the busy, noisy, unclean, and almost
grassless church-yard of a large town, with the still seclusion of a
Turkish cemetery, in some remote place; and yet further sanctified by the
grove of cypress in which it is embosomed.106
He prefers above all else the location of ‘a village church-yard, lying as it does
in the lap of nature’, and most favourably contrasted with ‘that of a town of
crowded population.’107 One of the reasons why Wordsworth wants to locate
the monuments in nature is that ‘the language of the senseless stone’ can be
given ‘a voice enforced and endeared by the benignity of that nature’.108 And
this ‘voice’ of the monuments offers a ‘Traveller’, passing by, some soothing
‘visible appearances or immediate impressions, lively and affecting analogies of
life as a journey-death as a sleep overcoming the tired wayfarer [. . .] of virtue
that standeth firm as a rock against the beating waves [. . .] of admonitions and
heart-stirring remembrances, like a refreshing breeze that comes without
warning, or the taste of the waters of an unexpected fountain’.109
Just as in The Excursion the stories of those dead in the vale coalesce
together with those of the living, so the site of the graves, like the dwelling
place of the living, is hardly differentiated from the landscape.110 As the act of
dying is an act of moving from one home to another home, the dead, like the
living, inhabit the vale. The natural environment appears to create a soothing
106
E.E., p. 54.
107
Ibid., p. 55.
Ibid., p. 54.
Ibid., p. 54.
See, Sharp, ‘The Churchyard among the Wordsworthian Mountains’, p. 396.
108
109
110
207
effect on the burial site as well as on the dwelling place of the living. After
reading the tranquilizing inscription in the ‘Church-yard’: ‘Discerning Mortal!
Do thou serve the will / Of Time’s eternal Master, and that peace, / Which the
World wants, shall be for Thee confirmed’ (Book VI, ll. 535-537), the Sceptic
agrees that ‘Smooth verse, inspired by no unlettered Muse’, and ‘the strain of
thought / Accords with Nature’s language’ (Book VI, ll. 538-540). In other
words, he identifies the effect of the verse with the effect of the natural
surroundings: ‘the soft voice / Of yon white torrent falling down the rocks /
Speaks, less distinctly, to the same effect’ (Book VI, ll. 540-542). For example,
in Book VII, the Pastor explains how a ‘Tall-pine tree’, standing next to the
tomb of the deaf Dalesman:
At the touch of every wandering breeze,
Murmurs, not idly, o’er his peaceful grave.
Soul-cheering Light, most bountiful of Things!
Guide of our way, mysterious Comforter!
Whose sacred influence, spread through earth and heaven. (ll. 497-501)
Therefore, Wordsworth affirms that ‘when death is in our thoughts, nothing can
make amends for the want of the soothing influences of nature’. 111 In this
respect, he finds a close connection between nature and the tombs in that the
latter owe their soothing beauty to the former: even to the extent that the
language of the monuments is ‘in unison with that nature’.112
Another aspect of the close link between nature and graves can be found in
111
Essays Upon Epitaphs, p. 54.
112
Ibid., p. 54.
208
Wordsworth’s egalitarian idea of dwelling. He invokes the sense of commonness
everywhere from Lyrical Ballads to The Excursion, and we have seen that, in
Home at Grasmere, he emphasises a reciprocal relationship between the
dwellers and the natural environment, and integrates the lives of the locals into
his idea of dwelling. 113 Likewise, the graves, as part of Wordsworth’s reestablished notion of dwelling, are associated with the sense of commonness
within the context of nature. In The Excursion, we hear about various deaths,
but all of them will ‘find an equal resting-place’ in ‘this place’:
[. . .] open to the good
And evil, to the just and the unjust;
In which they find an equal resting-place:
Even as the multitude of kindred brooks
And streams, whose murmur fills this hollow vale,
Whether their course be turbulent or smooth,
Their waters clear or sullied, all are lost
Within the bosom of yon chrystal Lake,
And end their journey in the same repose! (Book V, ll 920-928)
For Wordsworth, in ‘nature’ ‘all men resemble each other, as in the temple
where the universal Father is worshipped, or by the side of the grave which
gathers all human Beings to itself, and equalises the lofty and the low’.114 In
addition, an epitaph is ‘not a proud writing shut up for the studious: it is
exposed to all – to the wise and the most ignorant’: ‘in the church-yard it is
113
‘Advertisement’, in Lyrical Ballads 1798 (Oxford: Woodstock, 1990), pp. i-v (p. i): he
announces that his poetry is concerned with ‘the language of conversation in the middle and
lower classes of society’; ‘The Preface’, in Lyrical Ballads 1800 (Poole: Woodstock, 1997), pp. vxlvi (p. xxxvi-xxxvii): here he also says that he has chosen ‘subjects from common life, and
endeavoured to bring my language near to the real language of men’.
114
E.E., p. 59.
209
open to the day; the sun looks down upon the stone, and the rains of heaven
beat against it’. 115 The beauty of nature also contributes to the epitaph’s
openness to all in that it ‘must have borrowed the beauty from the surrounding
images of nature – from the trees, the wild flowers, from a stream running
perhaps within sight or hearing’.116 Thus, nature is involved in the egalitarian
and common aspects of the graves.
Interestingly, nature itself also plays an epitaphic function in association
with memory. In his ‘Wordsworth, Inscriptions, and Romantic Nature Poetry’,
Hartman holds that, for Wordsworth, landscape and graveyard merge together
through the dynamic of the mind. In eighteenth-century poetry, ‘not only is the
graveyard a major locus for the expression of nature sentiment, but is herself a
larger graveyard inscribed deeply with evidences of past life’, for example,
‘Gray’s Elegy (1751)’.117 In a similar vein, Kneale also recognises ‘the voice of
nature’ as ‘an epitaphic voice’ in which ‘nature itself is like one giant epitaph,
one complex memorial text to be conned by human beings’.
118
This
convergence of graveyard and nature is found in Wordsworth’s poetry where he
‘commemorates a strange spot in nature rather than a grave’ and ‘sees the pile
of stones as a funeral pile’ in his imagination. 119 For example, in his earlier
experimental poems such as ‘The Thorns’, ‘The Two April Mornings’, and ‘To
Joanna’, we discover that ‘the spot of mourning’ ‘lies in close association to the
115
Ibid., p. 59.
Ibid., p. 53.
117
Quoted in Jonathan Roberts, ‘Wordsworth, Epitaph, and the “Epitaphic”’, Literature Compass 1
(2004), 1-4 (pp. 2-3); Geoffrey Hartman, ‘Wordsworth, Inscriptions, and Romantic Nature Poetry’,
in From Sensibility to Romanticism: Essays Presented to Frederick A. Pottle, ed. by Frederick W.
Hilles and Harold Bloom (New York: Oxford UP, 1965), pp. 389-413 (p. 392).
118
J. Douglas Kneale, Monumental Writing: Aspects of Rhetoric in Wordsworth’s Poetry (Lincoln
and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), p. 83.
119
Hartman, ‘Wordsworth, Inscriptions, and Romantic Nature Poetry’, p. 393.
116
210
natural objects of a thorn bush, a bridge, a native rock’.120 In ‘Lines Left upon a
Seat in a Yew-tree’, Wordsworth gives an account of a man who died in a vale,
whose memory is evoked by ‘this lonely yew-tree,’ ‘piled-stones’, ‘barren
rocks’ (ll. 1, 9, 25). And the poet pronounces ‘this seat his only monument’ ‘in
this deep vale’ (ll. 42-43). ‘The poet reads landscape as if it were a monument
or grave’, and therefore ‘the lapidary inscription, replaced by the meditative
mind’, is ‘freed from its dependence’ upon a specific tomb.121 Landscape itself,
rather than a specific tomb, becomes epitaphic by associating itself with
memory. Accordingly, in The Vale of Esthwaite, the poet, ‘wandering round the
vale’, states that ‘[From] every rock would hang a tale’ (ll. 352-3).
Furthermore, nature’s epitaphic function requires that landscape is closely
associated with the consciousness of the characters in The Excursion. Given
that landscape as epitaph inspires the meditative mind particularly in relation to
memory, it can be shown that, in Book V of the Excursion, ‘the poet transforms
the physical journey through nature into a mental excursion which concerns the
metaphysics of existence’. 122 Being approached by the Pastor, the Wanderer
provides a brief summary about his discussion on despondency with the
Solitary:
[. . .] A living power
Is virtue, or not better than a name,
Fleeting as health or beauty, and unsound?
So that the only substance which remains,
(For thus the tenor of complaint hath run,)
120
121
122
Hall, ‘Signs of the Dead’, pp. 657-658.
Hartman, ‘Wordsworth, Inscriptions, and Romantic Nature Poetry’, pp. 400-401.
Hall, ‘Signs of the Dead’, p. 662.
211
Among so many shadows, are the pains
And penalties of miserable life,
Doomed to decay, and then expire in dust!
Our cogitations, this way have been drawn,
These are the points,” the Wanderer said, “on which
Our inquest turns. – Accord, good Sir! the light
Of your experience to dispel this gloom” (Book V, ll. 466-477)
This comment implies that the despondency of the Solitary is caused by his way
of interpreting death as ‘the pains and penalties of miserable life’. The
Solitary’s gloom regarding the plight of existence, caused by his way of
understanding, shows how ‘elegies lamenting the dead turn into self-morbid
solipsism’. 123 As the Wanderer ‘turns our inquest’ on such inner aspects of
human experience, his excursion ‘turns inward as an incursion through the inner
depths of consciousness played out in the voices of the Wanderer, the Solitary,
the Pastor, and the poet himself’. 124 As a result, the description of the
landscape can be associated with that of the consciousness.
4. Heavenly Dwelling
4.1. Ecclesiastical Sonnets
In the previous section, we saw how Wordsworth re-establishes the idea of
dwelling by associating the peace and harmony of a cottage in nature with the
influence and presence of death. If Wordsworth’s early notion of dwelling is
concerned with an earthly home and the immanence of God, in Essays Upon
Epitaphs and The Excursion he considers immortality and the transcendent
123
124
Ibid., p. 663.
Ibid., p. 662.
212
aspect of God. Further, one of the interesting changes in his later period is that
he becomes more aware of the vulnerability of earthly cottages and attempts to
seek a more secure home in a heavenly dwelling. Most critics regard his later
poetry as showing a decline in his poetic powers or a falling off in his
achievement, but my purpose in this section is not to examine whether his
poetic imagination gradually diminished, but to show how his perspective shifts
from a view of the dwelling in this world to a view of the dwelling in the next
world.125 Focusing on Part III of the Ecclesiastical Sonnets, I shall explore how
Wordsworth contemplates the heavenly dwelling through church architecture, in
which nature still constitutes one of the key elements.
The Ecclesiastical Sonnets consist of 132 sonnets that, while beginning
with the establishment of Christianity in England to the situation of religion in
Wordsworth’s day and dramatizing its ebb and flow, describe a journey or
pilgrimage to an eternal city, along with a struggle over the uncertainty of faith
in a fallen world, as well as a yearning for political stability and a spiritual goal
over and against mutability, decay, change and paradox.126 The sonnets used to
be not only part of Wordsworth’s long neglected later work, but also along with
the poet’s doubtful achievements in his later works, received some harsh
criticism. 127 But some critics have not failed to recognise their significance
125
See, Richard D. McGhee, ‘And Earth and Stars Composed a Universal Heaven: A View of
Wordsworth’s Later Poetry’, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 11 (1971), 641-657 (p.
641).
126
The series were originally published in 1822 as the Ecclesiastical Sketches with 102 sonnets,
but in 1837 Wordsworth changed the title to the Ecclesiastical Sonnets in Series, and he had
added thirty sonnets to the original 102 by 1845. See, Anne L. Rylestone, Prophetic Memory in
Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical Sonnets (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1991), p. xi; The quotations from Ecclesiastical Sonnets refer to The Poetical Works of
William Wordsworth, 4 vols., ed. by E. De Selincourt and Helen Darbishire (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1963), vol. 3, pp. 341-416.
127
There has been very little written about the Ecclesiastical Sonnets, which are touched upon
213
within the context of Wordsworth’s whole work. For example, attention should
be paid to the interconnectedness of religious ideas in the Ecclesiastical
Sonnets and in The Excursion concerning the nature of religion, the origins of
worship, immanence and transcendence in nature. While the uncertainty of faith
was not resolved yet in The Excursion, the composition of Ecclesiastical
Sonnets ‘marked a very important moment in Wordsworth’s intellectual life’ in
which he claimed ‘the necessity of defending’ faith as ‘the safeguard against
anarchy’, ‘social retrogression’, mutability and mortality.128 In particular, it is
clear that the poet is still preoccupied with the fear of death and the
vulnerability of any earthly home in the sonnets. In Essays Upon Epitaphs and
The Excursion, death is discussed in a positive sense as the poet attempts to be
reconciled with it by uncovering the meaning and influence of death for the
living. In the Ecclesiastical Sonnets, however, the poet focuses upon the
destructive power of death, which is in marked contrast with the immortality
and eternity of the heavenly dwelling.
4.2. The experience of death in the journey of our life
If the sonnets outline the whole of British Church history, Wordsworth,
only in a footnote or a passing comment in Wordsworth studies; In 1949, Hoxie Neale Fairchild
argued that ‘Detailed analysis of Ecclesiastical Sonnets is probably unnecessary and certainly
impossible. With a few familiar exceptions, the sonnets are mildly agitated pieces of rhetoric
rather than poems. They seldom reveal any personal religious emotion. So far as their ideas are
concerned, they give the impression of being the result of collaboration between a humane
Protestant who wishes to say all that can justly be said for Catholicism and a humane Catholic
who wishes to be equally polite to Protestantism. The plus and minus signs in this travesty of the
via media cancel out, leaving an intellectual and spiritual zero’, Religious Trends in English Poetry.
Vol. 3, 1780-1803: Romantic Faith (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1949), pp. 227-228. Quoted
by Rylestone, Prophetic Memory, p. xv; Stephen Gill also mentioned that ‘there are some strong
lines and Mutability is rightly anthologized as an example of Wordsworth’s later manner at its
most august, but for the most part the sonnets are dull’, William Wordsworth, p. 344.
128
See, Gill, William Wordsworth, pp. 343-344.
214
interestingly, draws a picture of a person’s whole life-journey from birth to
death in part III from Sonnet XX to Sonnet XXXIV. His understanding of the
journey of life is now entirely conditioned by the link between the mortality of
human life and the promise of faith. Each stage of life, overshadowed by the
fear of human mortality, is marked by a sacrament, such as Baptism (XX), The
Marriage Ceremony (XXVI), and Funeral Service (XXXI).
129
Although the
sacrament of Baptism is meant to celebrate the sense of a new beginning for a
new born baby under ‘parental Love’ and ‘Grace from above’, Wordsworth
juxtaposes life and death in Sonnet XX (Baptism). In the first half the sacrament
of baptism is described as a transformation into ‘a christian Flower / A Growth
from sinful Nature’s bed of weeds!’, which reminds us of St. Paul’s idea that
‘Therefore as by the offence of one judgement came upon all men to
condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all
men unto justification of life’.130 The new born baby thus changes from death to
life through baptism. Yet, a tension between life and death dominates the
second half of the sonnet in the sense that ‘The tombs – which hear and answer
that brief cry, / The Infant’s notice of his second birth - / Recall the wandering
Soul to sympathy / With what man hopes from Heaven, yet fears from Earth’. In
spite of the grace of life ‘from above’, the awareness of ‘fears from Earth’
recalls the unavoidable reality of death.
In Sonnet XXII (Catechising), Wordsworth continues to evoke a painful
129
XX. Baptism, XXI. Sponsors, XXII. Catechising, XXIII. Confirmation, XXIV. Confirmation
Continued, XXV. Sacrament, XXVI. The Marriage Ceremony, XXVII. Thanksgiving After Childbirth,
XXVIII. Visitation of the Sick, XXIX. The Commination Service, XXX. Forms of Prayer at Sea,
XXXI. Funeral Service, XXXII. Rural Ceremony, XXXIII. Regrets, XXXIV. Mutability.
130
Romans, 5. 18.
215
experience of mortality, being reminded of the loss of his mother at an early
age. This Sonnet uses the narrator’s recollection of the occasion on which the
children were tested to decide whether they were ready to be confirmed into
the church. The first seven lines describe well the anxious little children who
were gathering around ‘the Pastor’, wearing ‘new-wrought vest’ and holding ‘a
vernal posy’: some were murmuring ‘like a distant bee’, but some made ‘a bold
unerring answer’. The next few lines recall an affectionate relationship between
the narrator and his mother as her ‘anxious heart for me’ [narrator] may have
been ‘fluttered’ by ‘a bold unerring answer’ and her son wore ‘the flowers’
‘bound’ by the ‘happy hand’ of ‘Beloved Mother’. And yet, this loving
relationship is juxtaposed with a bitter remembrance of her death. A picture of
her face is conjured up by the ‘inaudible command’ of ‘Sweet flowers’, but the
last two lines disclose that the narrator was too young to understand the idea of
death and to mourn his loss, and that his present ‘heartfelt sigh’ does not seem
to compensate properly for the loss: ‘O lost too early for the frequent tear, /
And ill requited by this heartfelt sigh!’ In a similar vein, Sonnet XXIV
(Confirmation Continued) expresses a mother’s painful experience of her older
daughter’s death, creating a tension between a vision of Heaven and human
mortality. Although the sonnet imagines that the ‘Sister-child’ may dwell in
Heaven, the questions the poet asks – ‘Did gleams appear? / Opened a vision of
that blissful place / Where dwells a Sister-child?’ - underline the hard fact of
the girl’s death reserved for the last lines of the sonnet: ‘And was power given
/ Part of her lost One’s glory back to trace / Even to this Rite? For thus She
216
knelt, and, ere, / The summer-leaf had faded, passed to Heaven.’131 Just as the
poet reveals ‘ill requited’ loss in the final line of Sonnet XXII, so he finds an
insecure balance between an eternal life in Heaven and human mortality on
earth in Sonnet XXIV.
Wordsworth then carries on the journey of life from birth to death on earth
through other sacraments, and ends finally with Sonnet XXXIV (Mutability),
acknowledged as the greatest poem in the entire series and the final sonnet in
the series on liturgy. Although by juxtaposing a loving relationship and a painful
experience of loss the poet creates a tension over the teachings of the
sacraments in the previous sonnets, he appears to want to transcend the reality
of mortality by the authority of the voice in the sonnet ‘Mutability’, the
impersonality of mutability itself. 132 In this poem, the impersonal voice of
‘Mutability’ communicates Wordsworth’s realisation of both the ubiquity of
mutability and our inability to control it. The ‘outward forms’ of ‘Truth’ are
compared to ‘frosty rime, / That in the morning whitened hill and plain / And is
no more’, but this sense of mutability is ubiquitous:
From low to high doth dissolution climb,
And sink from high to low, along a scale
Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail
Further, ‘the unimaginable touch of Time’ suggests our inability to control death
and dissolution. The poet thus manages to keep a distance from the painful
131
Nancy Easterlin, Wordsworth and the Question of “Romantic Religion” (Lewisburg: Bucknell
University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1996), p. 147.
132
Ibid., p. 148.
217
personal emotional aspect of human mortality and he is able to recognise death
as it is through his ‘overarching awareness of death and dissolution as the
quintessential common experience’.133 What is implied in ‘Mutability’ is that, in
spite of being overshadowed by mortality, the sacraments of the church, to
which ‘the Soul must be tied by chain’ (XXV. Sacrament), can outshine the fear
and ‘gloomiest shade’ (XXV. Sacrament) of death by bringing out ‘hopes from
Heaven’ (XX. Baptism) and ‘a path of light’ (XXV. Sacrament). It should be noted
that the sonnets about a life’s journey from birth to death are immediately
followed by the sonnets on the subject of church architecture (XXXVIII – XLVII),
which symbolises the heavenly dwelling as well as the house of God for
common worship. Just as human life is subject to mutability and mortality, so
human dwelling itself on earth is vulnerable to ruin. Although the poet
conceives human life as ‘grass that springeth up at morn, / grows green, and is
cut down and withereth / Ere nightfall’ (XXXI. Funeral Service), he attempts to
move beyond this view by looking at the eternity of the heavenly dwelling
through church architecture.
4.3. Church architecture as a symbol of heavenly dwelling
In the previous parts of this chapter, it was shown that cottages and tombs
are key elements to formulate the idea of dwelling, but as Kerrigan points out,
in Wordsworth’s later works they are ‘replaced by chapels and churches’,
which are ‘increasingly treated as types of heaven, images of the Father’s
house with many mansions which Christ promised his followers’.134 Yet, in fact,
133
134
Ibid., p. 149.
Kerrigan, ‘Wordsworth and the Sonnet’, pp. 50-51.
218
Wordsworth already associated his understanding of human life with the idea of
church architecture, even during those periods when his poetry was full of
cottages and tombs. In his ‘Preface’ to The Excursion, for instance, Wordsworth
famously described The Recluse as ‘a gothic Church’ in a holistic sense in
which The Prelude is ‘the Anti-chapel’ and his minor Pieces are ‘the little Cells,
Oratories, and sepulchral Recesses’.
135
Considering The Recluse as ‘a
philosophical Poem’, ‘of Man, Nature, and Soceity’, we suppose that for
Wordsworth church architecture must be an essential model revealing the
whole picture of human life. The conclusion is that the image of the church
building already played a crucial role in his perception of the unity of the
universe in his early period. Moreover, in Essays Upon Epitaphs, he presents ‘a
parish-church’ as ‘a visible centre of a community of the living and the dead’.
Finally, in the Ecclesiastical Sonnets, the Church ‘suddenly imposes itself upon
the reader’s consciousness much like a mountain that has long dominated a
familiar landscape’.136 Whereas the poet was able to find solace and vision in
landscape in the past, he now turns to church architecture in which he uncovers
an imperishable eternal home. In other words, he tries to locate a safe and
eternal home over and against mutability in the church building which
symbolises a heavenly dwelling.
Most of all, the poet establishes the Church as a place of shelter for Faith,
for the exiled and the distressed. In Sonnet XXXIX, the church which would be
built from ‘Those forest oaks of Druid memory, / Shall long survive, to shelter
135
‘Preface’ to The Excursion (1814). ‘[. . . ] and the two Works have the same kind of relation
to each other, if he may so express himself, as the Anti-chapel has to the body of a gothic
Church.’
136
Rylestone, Prophetic Memory, p. 1.
219
the Abode / Of genuine Faith’. The Church of England is also described as ‘a
fearless resting-place’ for ‘self-exiled / From altars threatened, levelled, or
defiled’ during the French Revolution in Sonnet XXXVI (Emigrant French
Clergy). Roaming through the aisles of Westminster Abbey, the poet holds that,
‘in hours of fear / Or grovelling thought’, the believers can ‘seek a refuge’ here
(Sonnet XLV).
Further, church buildings as a shelter present a sense of eternity and
immortality.
Just
before
introducing
Sonnet
XXXVIII
(New
Churches),
Wordsworth offers two sonnets on ‘Old Abbeys’ (XXXV) and ‘Emigrant French
Clergy’ (XXXVI) which deal with the destruction of churches. The former traces
back to the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, and the latter originates
with the French Revolution in 1789. For Wordsworth, one of the decisive
common features between them is that churches were reduced to ruins or dust
during those periods: ‘MONASTIC Domes! Following my downward way, /
Untouched by due regret I marked your fall! / Now, ruin’ (XXXV); ‘EVEN while I
speak, the sacred roofs of France / Are shattered into dust’ (XXXVI). Although
they were wrecked in ruin and dust, a sense of continuity flows through them:
‘Once ye were holy, ye are holy still’ (XXXV), and the ‘self-exiled’ find ‘a
fearless resting-place’ for ‘their Faith’ in England (XXXVI). Finally, in Sonnet
XXXVIII (New Churches), he declares ‘the wished-for Temples rise!’ again
‘through England bounds’. Just as a phoenix burns itself on a funeral pyre every
five centuries and rises from the ashes with renewed youth, the poet imagines
that new churches rise from ruins and dust. The notion of re-rising thus, like a
phoenix, embodies the ideas of eternity and immortality, which resonate
220
through the sonnets on church architecture: ‘ye everlasting Piles!’ (XLII), ‘born
for immortality’ (XLIII), ‘dreamt not of a perishable home’ (XLV), ‘Infinity’s
embrace’ (XLV), ‘the eternal City’ (XLVII).
In Sonnet XLIII (Inside of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge), the poet is
able to refer explicitly to the notion of immortality in the interaction between
the ‘immense’ / And glorious’ interior architecture of the chapel and music, light,
and shade which ‘directs the human spirit to reveries of paradise’137:
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering-and wandering on as loth to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality. (ll. 9-14)
In fact, the church building itself is not the heavenly Jerusalem, but the symbol
and prototype of the eternal home, ‘a microcosm of the celestial world on earth’,
which links the earthly with the heavenly home and enables the believers to
overcome the fear of mortality in an earthly home.138 Wordsworth thus, at the
beginning of the next Sonnet XLV, writes that ‘They dreamt not of a perishable
home / Who thus could build’. In addition, he asserts, ‘The house that cannot
pass away be ours’, in a sonnet, published in 1842, which implies his yearning
for heavenly dwelling, in contrast with the mutability and mortality of any
137
John Delli-Carpini, History, Religion, and Politics in William Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical
Sonnets: with an Appendix Containing the Text of the Ecclesiastical Sonnets (Lewiston, N.Y.;
Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), p. 98.
138
See Delli-Carpini, History, Religion, and Politics, p. 97: ‘Sunlight shining trough the stained
glass windows of gothic cathedrals on the whitewashed walls of its interior was intended to
foreshadow the gems of the heavenly Jerusalem as described in Revelation 4. 2-3.’
221
earthly dwelling.139
4.4. Nature in the heavenly dwelling
Unlike the earthly dwelling, a heavenly dwelling seems to involve
transcendence and ‘the world above’ (XLII), rather than the material world of a
landscape in nature. Intriguingly, however, in the sonnets on church buildings
nature as corporeal reality continues to play a key role in the church building
with reference to the spatial and emotional and mental contexts. First of all,
nature as material reality is incorporated into church buildings in terms of
beauty, purity and caring. In the prefatory letter to Ecclesiastical Sketches
(1822), Wordsworth informs us that the composition of the sonnets was inspired
by his and his friend Sir George Beaumont’s search for a site for a new church
in his Esate in 1820.140 What is striking is how the beauty of nature stimulated
him to look at human life from the perspective of the power of faith: ‘It was one
of the most beautiful mornings of a mild season, -- our feelings were in
harmony with the cherishing influences of the scene; and such being our
purpose, we were naturally led to look back upon past events with wonder and
139
Sonnet XXVIII in Micellaneous Sonnets, ‘The most alluring clouds that mount the sky / Owe to
a troubled element their forms, / Their hues to sunset. If with raptured eye / We watch their
splendor, shall we covet storms, / And wish the Lord of day his slow decline / Would hasten, that
such pomp may float on high? / Behold, already they forget to shine, / Dissolve – and leave to him
who gazed a sigh. / Not loth to thank each moment for its boon / Of pure delight, come
whensoe’er it may, / Peace let us seek, - to stedfast things attune / Calm expectations, leaving to
the gay / And volatile their love of transient bowers, / The house that cannot pass away be ours.’
140
‘During the month of December, 1820, I accompanied a much-loved and honoured Friend in a
walk different parts of his Estate, with a view to fix upon the Site of a New Church which he
intended to erect. It was one of the most beautiful mornings of a mild season, --our feelings were
in harmony with the cherishing influences of the scene; and such being our purpose, we were
naturally led to look back upon past events with wonder and gratitude, and on the future with
hope. Not long afterwards, some of the Sonnets which will be found towards the close of this
Series were produced as a private memorial of that morning’s occupation’, ‘Advertisement’, in
Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822).
222
gratitude, and on the future with hope.’ This beautiful landscape thus
encouraged the poet to embrace the past and the future in the light of God’s
love for the world during his search for a site for a new church. Looking at ‘Old
Abbeys’, the poet detects ‘beauty’ and ‘ancient stillness’ as well as ‘ruin’ in
Sonnet XXXV, which vividly reminds us of Tintern Abbey, in which the beauty
of nature near Tintern Abbey is praised.
The purity of nature also contributes to building a new church in that the
chosen site for a new church is not an arbitrary one, but a place which
maintains its innocence in nature. At the very beginning of Sonnet XXXIX
(Church To Be Erected), he proclaims:
Be this the chosen site; the virgin sod,
Moistened from age to age by dewy eve,
Shall disappear, and grateful earth receive
The corner-stone from hands that build to God. (ll. 1-4)
Interestingly, the phrase, ‘Moistened from age to age’, implies additionally the
awareness of a sacredness which points to primitive gods. In the next lines, it is
mentioned that ‘Those forest of oaks of Druid memory’ will ‘shelter the Abode
Of genuine Faith’. This primitive sacredness then is consecrated as God’s
dwelling place by His holiness:141
[. . .] there let the holy altar stand
141
Mircea Eliade comments on the link between primitive and modern religious architecture:
‘Thus religious architecture simply took over and developed the cosmological symbolism already
present in the structure of primitive habitations’, The Sacred and the Profane (San Diego:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959), p. 58. Quoted by Delli-Carpini, History, Religion, and Politics,
p. 96.
223
For kneeling adoration; - while – above,
Broods, visibly portrayed, the mystic Dove,
That shall protect from blasphemy the Land. (ll. 11-4)
‘The mystic Dove’ implies that the purity and ancient holiness of nature will turn
into the sacredness of God. Wordsworth uses a similar image about the
relationship between nature and a new church-yard in Sonnet XLI (New
Church-Yard). Just as ‘the virgin sod’ shall be offered to the site for the new
church, so ‘The encircling ground, in native turf arrayed’ is now ‘given to social
interests, and to favouring Heaven’ ‘by solemn consecration’ even to the extent
that ‘the lonely Sexton’s spade shall wound the tender sod’. Yet, this pure place
will become a place for encounter between the people and God: ‘The prayers,
the contrite struggle, and the trust / That to the Almighty Father looks through
all.’
Further, the caring aspect of nature appears to replace the power of
incense in the new churches. In Sonnet XL, Wordsworth describes the moment
of burning incense inside the church: ‘clouds of incense mounting and veiled the
rood’. But he sees it as ‘appalling rite’, which ‘Our Church prepares not, trusting
to the might / Of simple truth with grace divine imbued’. Rather than ‘concealing
the precious Cross, like men ashamed’, with clouds of incense, he imagines that
caring nature will venerate it:
[. . .] the Sun with his first smile
Shall greet that symbol crowning the low Pile:
And the fresh air of incense-breathing morn
Shall wooingly embrace it; and green moss
Creep round its arms through centuries unborn. (ll. 10-4)
224
Just as the Grasmere vale receives a new dweller with tenderness, so the smile
of the Sun, morning fresh air and green moss, will pay homage to the cross.
Soothing nature’s veneration of the cross brings to mind the pedlar’s mystic
experience in nature through which he was able to feel ‘the lesson deep of love’
(ll. 180-185), rather than by the traditional way of religious education. The
landscape is thus integrated spatially and spiritually into the church, which
suggests that a soothing experience in nature can point to the idea of a
heavenly dwelling.142
The coalescence of nature and the church is also found when Wordsworth
articulates the emotional, psychological and spiritual solace in church
architecture, which bears a close parallel to the images of nature creating
consolation and hope. When the poet contemplates the interior architecture of
the church, the account of his experience is very close to the account of his
experience in nature. In fact, there is nature’s literal assimilation into the
church in Sonnet XXXIII (Regrets) in which ‘the church building, filled with
greens at Christmas’, serves as a ‘counter Spirit to nature in winter’143:
Go, seek, when Christmas snows discomfort bring,
The counter Spirit found in some gay church
Green with fresh holly, every pew a perch (ll. 9-11)
142
Rylestone comments that ‘the cooperation between the elements of nature and the Church is
portrayed forcefully by John Constable in his View of Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s
Grounds (1826), in which the trees nurturingly frame, indeed embrace, but do not oppress or
visually overpower the cathedral. The friendship between Wordsworth and Constable began in
1806 and continued to the painter’s death in 1837. Although they admired each other’s work,
there is no record that Wordsworth commented on this particular painting’, Prophetic Memory, p.
118 n. 3.
143
Rylestone, Prophetic Memory, p. 96.
225
Here the solace and ‘Hope’ (XXXIII) created by the church’s Christmas rituals
seems tantamount to an experience of nature.144 Further, for Wordsworth, the
sensual aspects of nature, such as light, dark and sound, are of great
significance in that they themselves bring about consolation and at the same
time enable the poet to perceive the depth of life in his poetic imagination.
Intriguingly, we can find such images inside the church, ‘where light and shade
repose, / where music dwells’ (XLIII), even to the extent that darkness and light
or solitude and joy in nature are held together in one vision.145 In Sonnet XLIV,
he expresses how the fusion of the darkness of Night and the music leads to a
mystical experience in King’s College Chapel:
Shine on, until ye fade with coming Night!But, from the arms of silence-list! O list!
The music bursteth into second life;
The notes luxuriate, every stone is kissed
By sound, or ghost of sound, in mazy strife;
Heart-thrilling strains, that cast, before the eye
Of the devout, a veil of ecstasy! (ll. 8-14).
The interplay between music and darkness can create a sense of ecstasy, but in
fact it is the power of darkness that enables the music to maximise the
144
I also quoted above a passage from XLIII. Inside of Kings College Chapel, Cambridge, which
shows how the perception of the interior architecture is typically associated with the meditation
of nature, in particular, with respect to the sense of immortality: ‘These lofty pillars, spread that
branching roof / Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells, / Where light and shade repose,
where music dwells / Lingering-and wandering on as loth to die; / Like thoughts whose very
sweetness yieldeth proof / that they were born for immortality.’
145
Florence Marsh, Wordsworth’s Imagery; a Study in Poetic Vision (Hamden, Conn.: Archon
Books, 1963), p. 53.
226
experience of bliss in the church. In a similar vein, in On the Power of Sound,
the mortality of Arion, whose music ‘could humanise the creatures of the sea’,
becomes immortalized by ‘one chant’ in ‘silent night’: ‘And he, with his
preserver, shine starbright / In memory, through silent night’ (IX).146 The image
of darkness, which is often associated with the darkness inside the tomb, calls
to mind human mortality, which may be transformed into immortality through
music.
There is also a metaphorical interplay between nature and the church. To
reveal the historical continuity and connectedness between the world and God,
the poet uses the metaphor of a river or a stream of water. In the introductory
sonnet in Part I the aim of the sonnets is announced:
I, who essayed the nobler Stream to trace
Of Liberty, and smote the plausive string
Till the checked torrent, proudly triumphing,
Won for herself a lasting resting-place;
Now seek upon the heights of Time the source
Of a Holy River [ . . . ] (I. Introduction)
And in the very last sonnet in Part III ‘That Stream upon whose bosom we have
passed’ finally ‘has reached the eternal City-built / For the perfected Spirit of
the just!’ (XLVII). The journey motif of a nation or an individual in the
Ecclesiastical Sonnets is developed and exemplified by the image of a river. As
a river is born and flows, a human being or a society is born and grows. In the
final sonnet of The River Duddon, whose name is mentioned in Sonnet I in Part I
146
Composed in 1828; published in 1835.
227
of Ecclesiastical Sonnets, the ever-gliding stream is described as ‘a type of the
ever-vanishing yet ever developing race of man’.147 Whereas human beings ‘go
toward the silent tomb’, the river does not pass away. But the poet’s advance to
‘the source / Of a Holy River’ suggests ‘the mingling of the soul with
eternity’. 148 In this respect, the river as an image of growth and eternity
constitutes a crucial element in exploring the journey into the permanent
dwelling place through the metaphorical interplay between nature and the
church.
Dividing his career into three phases, we have seen how Wordsworth
attempts to shape the idea of dwelling over and against fears and anxieties
about human mortality: 1. dwelling in a cottage in Grasmere; 2. dwelling in the
community of the living and the dead; 3. a heavenly dwelling. For him, dwelling
does not mean simply a place for living, but, as with Heidegger’s idea of
dwelling, it is fundamentally based upon a close relationship between humanity,
nature, and God, which develops at the level of emotion and psychology and
also as an environmental locality. Evidently each phase has two principal
ecotheological aspects, the independent sacred value of nature, and its interrelatedness. In the first phase, the experience of the one great life, which
147
XXXIV. After-Thought, ‘I THOUGHT of Thee, my partner and my guide, / As being past away.
– Vain sympathies! / For, backward, Duddon! As I cast my eyes, / I see what was, and is, and will
abide; / Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide; / The Form remains, the Function never
dies; / While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise, / We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
/ The elements, must vanish; - be it so! / Enough, if something from our hands have power / To
live, and act, and serve the future hour; / And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, / Through love,
through hope, and faith’s transcendent dower, / We feel that we are greater than we know ’; ‘I,
who accompanied with faithful pace / Cerulean Duddon from his cloud-fed spring, / And loved
with spirit ruled by his to sing / Of mountain quiet and boon nature’s grace’; Arthur Beatty,
William Wordsworth: His Doctrine and Art in Their Historical Relations (Madison: The University
of Wisconsin Press, 1960), p. 222.
148
Marsh, Wordsworth’s Imagery, p. 94.
228
refers to ‘one Household under God’ in Grasmere, is founded upon a mutual and
caring relationship between the dwellers and the natural environment within the
context of God’s presence, and at the same time upon the sacredness of nature
articulated by the presence of God in nature. Secondly, dwelling in the
community of the living and the dead, who are bonded together by locality,
emotion, and morality, is dependent upon the religious notion of immortality,
and the soothing, beautiful, egalitarian and epitaphic aspects of nature. Lastly,
the heavenly dwelling, represented by church buildings, is also integrated into a
crucial relationship with God and nature on the ground that it is based upon the
sense of immortality in God and upon nature’s various characteristics: beauty,
purity, sacredness, care, consolation, hope, and metaphor for on-going journey.
Overall, it can be affirmed that Wordsworth’s idea of dwelling combines two
significant ecotheological aspects.
229
Chapter 4
Eschatology in Coleridge and Wordsworth
In
this
Chapter,
I
explore
the
ecotheological
implications
of
the
eschatological aspects of the works of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Chapter 1
underlined the significance of eschatology to ecotheology, which tries to locate
the non-human natural world in its context of final salvation. If nature is not
thought about with regard to the end of the time, nature may be thought of
simply as existing for the wellbeing of human beings. In order to appreciate the
intrinsic value of nature, ecotheology considers it essential to formulate an
eschatological theory that understands nature as one of the key elements of the
Apocalypse. It will be shown that nature is involved in Apocalypse through its
symbols, images, and effects upon the psychology and emotion of human beings.
Chapters 2 and 3 argued that Coleridge’s on-going search for the unity of the
universe and Wordsworth’s notion of dwelling reveal clearly some key
ecotheological aspects of their thinking. Now it is necessary to investigate
whether the two poets develop an eschatological vision that provides a
distinctive role for nature.
Wordsworth and Coleridge were both deeply committed to eschatological
thinking, although over their careers it differed in its complexity. First, both of
them perceived the French Revolution as an apocalyptic event which could
provoke the transformation of the world in a literal sense. Secondly, even after
their disillusionment with the Revolution, they did not give up their yearning to
230
transform and develop an internalized means for attaining it. If Coleridge turns
to the revolution of the mind, Wordsworth looks to the power of imagination.
Although these are internalized means to an apocalypse, it will be shown that in
a fundamental sense they are associated with an external reality. Lastly, both
Coleridge and Wordsworth offer a final vision of the universe beyond our life on
earth. What remains to be shown is to show how the non-human natural world
is integrated into their eschatological vision at each stage of their development.
Before proceeding, however, we will discuss briefly the definition of
eschatology. As shown in Chapter 1, traditionally the two ideas of ‘apocalypse’
and ‘millennium’ have been dealt with together in relation to eschatology. The
transformative power of an apocalypse brings to an abrupt end the present
world and gives birth to a new world, which is often described as the
‘millennium’. Hartman explains some meanings of the term ‘apocalypse’: i) ‘the
Apocalypse of St. John (the Book of Revelation)’; ii) being concerned with ‘the
Last Things’; iii) a desire for ‘the inauguration of a new epoch’; iv) ‘any strong
desire to cast out nature and to achieve an unmediated contact with the
principle of things’.
1
Both Coleridge and Wordsworth use the terms
‘apocalypse’ and ‘millennium’ for their eschatological vision in relation to the
transformation of the world, sometimes referring to the Apocalypse of St. John
either explicitly or implicitly.
1. Coleridge
1
Hartman, Wordsworth’s Poetry, p. xxii.
231
1.1.1. Enlightenment, aesthetics and politics, and religion
It is obvious that apocalypse and millennium are principal themes in
Coleridge’s poems of the early and middle 1790s in relation to the French
Revolution.2 The idea that the French Revolution shaped thinking in the period
scarcely needs restating. Indeed it was widely seen as a sign of the coming of
the Apocalypse and of the Millennium. It is worth pointing out the principal
elements in apocalyptic thought about the Revolution, which influenced the
responses of Coleridge and Wordsworth: Enlightenment, aesthetics and politics,
and religion. First, the Revolution was ascribed partly to the power of reason
and science in the Enlightenment. In his lectures on The Philosophy of History
(1822), Hegel describes the Revolution as a triumph over faith: in the French
Revolution ‘man had advanced to the recognition of the principle that Thought
ought to govern spiritual reality. This was accordingly a glorious mental dawn.’3
The French Revolution is ‘the happy consciousness of satisfied Enlightenment’
in that the inner epistemological revolution of the Enlightenment becomes
actualized in the real world.4 Both Wordsworth and Coleridge associated the
French Revolution with the power of Reason. For Wordsworth, it was the time
‘When Reason seem’d the most to assert her rights / When most intent on
making of herself / A prime Enchanter to assist the work / Which then was
2
The Revolution was undoubtedly the epicentre of his thinking about these issues. See, Morton
Paley, Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), p.
100.
3
Georg Hegel, Philosophy of History, trans. by J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), p. 447.
Quoted in David Beran, Early British Romanticism, the Frankfurt School, and French poststructuralism: in the wake of failed revolution (New York: P. Lang, 2001), p. 9.
4
Georg Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977).
See Beran, Early British Romanticism, p. 13.
232
going forwards in her name’. 5 In Stanza V of ‘Destruction of the Bastille’,
Coleridge claims that the enlightened mind of a peasant will no longer be
‘fettered’ by irrational ‘fear’ and superstition, for ‘Liberty the soul of Life shall
reign’ (ll. 27-30).6
Milton was also an important influence on literary and political responses in
this regard, especially for Coleridge and Wordsworth. As Peter Kitson put it,
during the middle of the eighteenth century Milton became ‘the paramount poet
of the sublime, and Paradise Lost, became along with the Bible’, a presence that
was ‘a political as well as a literary one’.7 Thomas De Quincey, for example,
notes that ‘in Milton only, first and last, is the power of the sublime revealed’.8
Probably it was Edmund Burke who, in his A Philosophical Enquiry into the
Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), established him as
the sublime poet for the Romantic Age. Attempting to define the aesthetic
notion of the sublime, Burke described Milton as ‘the great poet’, who
understood better than anyone ‘the secret of heightening, or of setting terrible
things’ and was able to create the effect of the sublime through the dynamic of
light and darkness, instancing ‘a light which by its very excess is converted into
a species of darkness’.9 What mattered for Burke was the idea of the sublime,
5
6
The Prelude, X, ll. 697-700.
Beran, Early British Romanticism, p. 10.
7
Peter J Kitson, ‘To Milton’s Trump: Coleridge’s Unitarian Sublime and the Miltonic Apocalypse’,
in Romanticism and Millenarianism, ed. by Tim Fulford (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 37-52 (pp.
40, 42).
8
‘On Milton’ (December, 1839), in The Romantics on Milton: Formal Essays and Critical Asides,
ed. by Joseph Anthony Wittreich Jr. (Cleveland, Oh. And London, 1970), pp. 475-483 (p. 480).
Quoted in Kitson, ‘To Milton’s Trump’, p. 42.
9
Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,
ed. by J. T. Boulton (London, 1958), pp. 59, 61-2, 80. Quoted in Kitson, ‘To Milton’s Trump’, p.
43.
233
but for others Milton’s blend of politics and aesthetics was of significance.10 In
his radical pamphlet The Plot Discovered (1795), Coleridge pleaded for ‘wisdom
and inspiring zeal’ with ‘Sages and patriots that being dead do yet speak to us,
spirits of Milton, Locke, Sidney, Harrington!’. 11 Wordsworth also began his
sonnet ‘London’ (1802) with the invocation, ‘Milton! thou should’st be living at
this hour’ and asked him to give ‘manners, virtue, freedom, power’ to us, who
are ‘selfish men’.12 For them, Milton was a republican hero, an example of a
prophetic voice, which stood out against the sinfulness of the times in which he
lived. In other words, Milton’s mixed message of politics and aesthetics was
applied to comprehending the Revolution.
Although the Revolution was praised as a triumph of Reason over faith to
bring about the transformation of the world, the transformation itself was
understood as a religious event by some people, such as Richard Price and
Joseph Priestley.13 Among the most famous of the millenarian responses to the
10
See, Kitson, ‘To Milton’s Trump’, p. 43.
Coleridge, The Plot Discovered: or An Address to the People Against Ministerial Treason
(Bristol, 1795), pp. 10-11.
12
Wordsworth, ‘London’ (1802).
13
As ‘a religion or a philosophy lies at the base of every Revolution’, ‘the French Revolution took
for its base one of the deepest rooted and most compelling myths in the culture of Christian
Europe – the story of Christ’s resurrection and the salvation of mankind in his Second Coming.’
See, John P. Farrell, Revolution as Tragedy: The Dilemma of the Moderate from Scott to Arnold
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), p. 46; Greg Kucich, ‘Ironic Apocalypse in
Romanticism and the French Revolution’, in Revolution and English Romanticism: Politics and
Rhetoric, ed. by Keith Hanley and Raman Selden (Hemel Hempstead, 1990), pp. 67-88, p. 73. See
also Abrams, ‘English Romanticism’, p. 98; Prior to the 1790s most Britons, whether they were
Anglicans or dissenters, believed in the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth, that would be
followed by Christ’s second coming. See, Matt Slykhuis, ‘Chaos and Clay: Apocalyptic
Expectation And Human Depravity in Coleridge and Byron’, in Turning Points and
Transformations: Essays on Language, Literature, and Culture, ed. By Christine DeVine and Marie
Hendry (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2011), pp. 59-94 (p. 61). Slykhuis mentions that in 1703
Daniel Whitby published a New Testament commentary with an appendix entitled ‘A Treatise of
the Millennium: She shewing That It Is Not a Reign of Persons Raised from the Dead, but of the
Church Flourishing Gloriously for a Thousand Years after the Conversion of the Jews, and the
Flowing-in of All Nations to Them Thus Converted to the Christian Faith’. As its unwieldy title
suggests, this text presented the optimistic, postmillennial view that history was moving
11
234
Revolution was that of Richard Price in his sermon to the London Revolution
Society in 1789.14 Price described the Revolution as bearing on the idea of the
millennium:
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have
seen thy salvation [. . .] Behold kingdom, admonished by you, starting
from sleep, breaking their fetters, and claiming justice from their
oppressors! Behold, the light you have struck out, after setting America
free, reflected to France, and there kindled into a blaze that lays
despotism in ashes, and warms and illuminates Europe!15
Here Price associates the political events of the American and French
Revolution with the coming of a millennial Kingdom. Priestley, the leading
Unitarian thinker, also followed this apocalyptic and millenarian view of politics
in the Revolution. In his Sermon, Preached at the Gravel Pit Meeting in Hackney
in 1794, given before he left Britain for the United States, Priestley explicitly
adopted a blend of apocalypse and millennialism in hailing the Revolution as the
opening-up of the expected time, ‘the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ’. He
insists that the establishment of the Kingdom would be preceded by ‘great
calamities, such as the world has never yet experienced’, and he explains the
political events of the Revolution in France as the predicted signs of the times
inexorably toward the Church’s ‘Flourishing Gloriously’; See also, Fulford, ‘Millenarianism and
the Study of Romanticism’, pp. 1-2.
14
See, Romanticism and Revolution: A Reader, ed. by Jon Mee and David Fallon (Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2011), pp. 12-13.
15
Richard Price, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country (Boston, 1790), Eighteenth Century
Collections
Online
d&tabID=T001&docId=CW105378031&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&
docLevel=FASCIMILE [accessed 14 March 2013], p. 40; See also Paley, Apocalypse and
Millennium, p.111.
235
by interpreting them as the accomplishment of Revelation, chap. xi.3: ‘And the
same hour there was a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and
in the earthquake were slain of men (or literally, names of men) seven thousand,
and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to God’.16 The violent events
of the French Revolution are the beginning of those very calamitous times, and
the millennium is imminent.17
1.1.2. The French Revolution as apocalypse and millennium
Likewise, Coleridge had also showed an initial enthusiasm about the
Revolution. Looking back on the decade in The Friend, he mentioned that ‘My
feelings, however, and imagination did not remain unkindled in this general
conflagration; and I confess I should be more inclined to be ashamed than proud
of myself, if they had: I was a sharer in the general vortex.’18 Further, his way
of perceiving the Revolution was always deeply influenced by the language of
16
Joseph Priestley, The Present State of Europe Compared with Antient Prophecies: A Sermon,
Preached at the Gravel Pit Meeting in Hackney, February 28, 1794, being the Day Appointed for a
General Fast (London, 3rd edit., 1794), Eighteenth Century Collections Online
d&tabID=T001&docId=CW123004949&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&
docLevel=FASCIMILE [accessed 14 March 2013], p. 26.
17
Orianne Smith refers to Hester Lynch ‘Piozzi’s apocalyptic speculations’ and ‘millenarianism’
arguing that she, ‘like many Britons’, ‘read the French Revolution through the lens of scripture
and believed that the time had come for ordinary people with extraordinary gifts to wear their
rightful mantles as spiritual or political leaders’. For instance, in her Retrospection, Piozzi pointed
to the imminent Apocalypse: ‘That not one prodigy foretold our fate, can hardly [. . .] be
complained of with justice. The aurora borealis, not seen in England till the beginning of this
century, was considered as portentous by the vulgar, and wondered at a little even by the wise’
(quoted from Samuel Johnson’s unfinished tragedy Irene, cited by James Boswell, Boswell’s Life
of Johnson, ed. by George Birkbeck Hill, rev. L. F. Powell, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1934), vol. 1, p. 109. See, Romantic Women Writers, Revolution, and Prophecy: Rebellious
Daughters, 1786-1826 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 75-98 (pp.
76, 95); Jon Mee also presents some intellectuals linked to millenarianism in the 1790s, such as W.
B. Cadogan’s Liberty and Equality (1792), George Riebau’s God’s Awful Warning (1795), and
Garnet Terry’s Prophetical Extracts (1795). See, Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the
Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 21, 33.
18
Friend I, p. 223.
236
the Bible, often mediated through Milton. 19 Accordingly, secular events are
described as sacred events in his poetry. If we look at ‘Destruction of the
Bastile’, written while the poet was still at school, we catch a glimpse of how
the school boy understood the Revolution religiously as well as politically. He
celebrates the dawn of a new era for humanity in that personified ‘Freedom’
and ‘Liberty’ as ‘the soul of Life’ ‘shall reign, Shall throb in every pulse’, and
‘shall flow thro’ every vein!’, over and against ‘Tyranny’ and its ‘terrors’. At
the same time, his description of the Revolution is deeply coloured with
apocalyptic imagery. In Stanza VI, the poet addresses the question, ‘Shall
France alone a Despot spurn?’, but he asserts that ‘every land from pole to pole
/ Shall boast one independent soul!’. Yet, ‘favour’d Britain be /first ever of the
first and freest of the free!’ Rather than limiting the Revolution only to France,
the patriotic schoolboy turns his eyes to the whole world, particularly wishing
that a similar transformation would happen in England. 20 In addition, it is
important to note that he introduces apocalyptic imagery in describing the
emergence of Freedom: ‘Freedom rous’d by fierce Disdain’, ‘broke thy triple
chain’, ‘the storm which Earth’s deep entrails hide’, ‘Power’s blood-stain’d
streamers.’ In his later descriptions of the Revolution, these images will reappear in a more sophisticated way linked to thoughts of apocalypse and
millennium.
However, Coleridge’s interpretation of the Revolution as apocalypse and
19
See, Peter Kitson, ‘Political Thinker’, in The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge, ed. by Lucy
Newlyn (Cambridge, England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 156-169 (pp.
157, 160, 162).
20
Ashton comments that ‘Coleridge welcomes France’s “wild” breaking of the “triple chain” in
terms not very different from those of the Whig progress poems he was still imitating’, The Life
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 28.
237
millennium is not always straightforward because the hope and promise was
followed by the Terror and the Wars. As the Revolution turned in an
undesirable direction, Coleridge had to change his understanding of the
Revolution. The fervent Romantic response to the Revolution lasted from 1789
to 1794, from the fall of the Bastille to the establishment of the Directorate
after the Terror, and Coleridge’s three major poems on the Revolution were
written after that period, The Destiny of Nations (1796), Religious Musings
(1796), and France: An Ode (1798).21 Although the Revolution began with pure
intentions, it had been subverted by the use of violence. Coleridge saw the
situation as a paradox of ‘a nation wading to their Rights through Blood, and
marking the track of Freedom by Devastation!’. 22 Yet Coleridge did not
immediately give up his hope and continued to identify the Revolution with
personified Freedom by interpreting the violence as part of the whole process.
In The Destiny of Nations, Joan of Arc sees a vision that ‘The Sun that rose on
Freedom, rose in Blood!’ but ‘Soon shall the Morning struggle into Day, / The
stormy Morning into cloudless Noon’. Coleridge confesses that ‘In my calmer
moments I have the firmest faith that all things work together for good. But
alas! It seems a long and dark process’.23 During this period his treatment of
the Revolution is thus characterised by a mixture of criticism and hope. It will
be helpful to look more closely at Religious Musings to find out how Coleridge
comprehended the French Revolution as a mixture of hope and violence. This
21
As Norman Fruman comments ‘The Destiny of Nations’ and ‘Religious Musings’, both equally
long and discursive epics, ‘embody the general shape of the poetic realm he hoped to conquer’;
they share some crucial themes and patterns in common. See, Norman Fruman, Coleridge, The
Damaged Archangel (London: George Allen and Unqin Ltd, 1972), p. 256.
22
Lects. 1795, p. 6.
23
CPW I, p. 148.
238
may show how his eschatological understanding of the Revolution can provide
an ecotheological perspective.
Religious Musings describes the political events during the Revolution as
apocalyptic by adapting the religious beliefs of apocalypse to current political
circumstances. Coleridge has a pessimistic view of human nature and of the
moral failing of the established order, which explains his enthusiasm for the
Revolution.24 Shortly after the description of creation (ll. 105-116), Coleridge
gives an account of the dark side of humanity. A young Angel looks down on
Human Nature and beholds:
A sea of blood bestrewed with wrecks, where mad
Embattling Interests on each other rush
With unhelmed rage!
‘Tis the sublime of man (ll. 124-127)
This ‘sublime of man’ alludes ironically to Pitt’s Government, the slave trade
(‘loud-laughing Trade / More hideous packs his bales of living anguish’), the
war and the defences of it in Parliament which turn God into an ‘Accomplice
Deity’. The Church of England is described as ‘mitred Atheism’.25 But Coleridge
suggests that the depravity of humanity is a problem not only for contemporary
society, but for the whole history of human beings. He sketches a brief history
of such depravity: during ‘the primeval age’ ‘the vacant Shepherd’, wandering
with his flock, gives way to ‘A host of new desires’ and ‘Property began’. Then
‘Warriors, and Lords, and Priests’ created ‘all the sore ills / That vex and
24
25
See, Slykhuis, ‘Chaos and Clay’, p. 61.
Ashton, The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 84.
239
desolate our mortal life’. Thereafter he talks about the Enlightenment during
which ‘heavenly Science’ emerged and granted ‘Freedom’, and Philosophers
and Bards / Spread in concentric circles o’er waken’d realms’. Nevertheless,
these great thinkers are impotent to resist the coming judgement which is
portrayed with images of lions and hyaenas with ‘bloody jaws’, and ‘a poor
widow’ weeping over ‘her husband’s mangled corse’.26 They could only bewail,
‘Why there was misery in a world so fair.’
Having provided a historical overview of the perversion of human nature,
Coleridge projects a prophetic voice, pronouncing an apocalyptic judgement in
the near future against contemporary society. The poet does not hide his
agitation in predicting the imminent ‘day of Retribution’, and tells the ‘Children
of Wretchedness’ that ‘More groans must rise, / More blood must stream, or ere
your wrongs be full’ (ll. 301-302). Finally, he foresees that:
The Lamb of God hath opened the fifth seal:
And upward rush on swiftest wing of fire
The innumerable multitude of wrongs
By man on man inflicted!
[. . .]
And lo! the Great, the Rich, the Mighty Men,
The Kings and the Chief Captains of the World
With all that fixed on high like stars of Heaven
Shot baleful influence, shall be cast to earth,
Vile and down-trodden, as the untimely fruit
Shook from the fig-tree by a sudden storm.
Even now the storm begins: [. . .]
26
Slykhuis, ‘Chaos and Clay’, p. 64.
240
(ll. 304-315)
Just as Coleridge opens the poem with the sound of ‘a Cherub’s trump’ and ‘the
vision of the heavenly multitude’, this passage conveys explicitly the thought of
an apocalypse borrowing some direct quotations from St. John’s visions on
Patmos. He provides a passage from the sixth chapter of the Revelation of St.
John in his Note.27 What is noteworthy in the Revelation is that, before the fifth
seal is opened, ‘Death and Hell’ were given ‘power’ ‘to kill with sword, and with
hunger, and with pestilence, and with the beasts of the Earth’. As the event of
an apocalypse is an act of judgement, it eventually brings violence and turmoil.
Coleridge applies this judgement from the Bible to contemporary political
events. He explains that the above-quoted passage alludes to the French
Revolution.28 Abandoning ‘a vantage point beyond history’, Coleridge ‘plunges
his poem into the impermanence of history’ in order to show how ‘the
prophecies of Revelation’ will be fulfilled by ‘the ambitions of the French
Revolution’.29 Although he has witnessed the violence of the Revolution, he still
has faith in the promise and hope of the Revolution in that he regards the
violence as a turbulent act of judgement, describing it as the beginning of ‘the
storm’. In this sense, for Coleridge, the downfall of ‘the Great, the Rich, the
Kings’ is part of an apocalyptic judgement.
Apocalyptic destruction is not the whole picture as it will be followed by a
millennium and finally the opening of the gates to Paradise through the return of
Christ. In particular, the opening of Religious Musings, written on Christmas Eve
of 1794, describes the scene of the Nativity. The poet uses the story of Christ
27
CPW I, p. 120.
28
Ibid., p. 121.
David Collings, ‘Coleridge Beginning a Career: Desultory Authorship in Religious Musings’,
ELH, 58 (1991), 167-193 (p. 170).
29
241
not only as ‘a point of reference’ for salvation but also a paradigm for the
relationship between apocalypse and millennium. 30 The scene of the Nativity
moves immediately to that of suffering and death, but Coleridge emphasises the
necessity, rather than the unavoidable tragedy, of death within the whole
history of God’s redemption, declaring that his death was in truth ‘Lovely’. He
holds that before ‘the Messiah’s destined victory!’ ‘first offences needs must
come!’. Suffering and death was thus required as part of the salvation history.
This paradigm of Christ permeates the poem and consolidates the crucial
relationship between apocalypse and millennium. Just as death preceded the
resurrection of Jesus, apocalyptic violence will be followed by a millennium.
There can be no millennium without apocalypse just as there could be no
resurrection without death. Morton Paley shows that Coleridge’s thought about
that relationship is based on his study of John of Patmos, Milton and Thomas
Burnet’s Sacred Theory of the Earth.31 In the third and fourth books, Burnet
articulates the inter-related bond between apocalypse and millennium in a way
that there will be ‘New Heavens and Earth; and yet these shall be annihilated’;
these first will be ‘redu’d to nothing, and then others created, spick and span
New, out of nothing’.32 In the new Heavens and new Earth, ‘the Prince of Peace
shall rule’. 33 Likewise, after his account of the apocalyptic storm, Coleridge
30
Jon Mee, Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 43-46. Quoted in John Beer, ‘Romantic Apocalypses’, in
Romanticism and Millenarianism, ed. by Tim Fulford (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 53-69 (p.
56).
31
Paley, Apocalypse and Millennium, p. 117.
32
In BL II, Coleridge refers to the book: ‘The writings of Plato, and Jeremy Taylor, and Burnet’s
Theory of the Earth, furnish undeniable proofs that poetry of the highest kind may exist without
metre, and even without the contradistinguishing objects of a poem’, p. 14; Thomas Burnet, The
Sacred Theory of the Earth (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965), Book IV, Ch. I
Introduction, p. 321.
33
Burnet, The Sacred Theory of the Earth, Book III, Ch. I Introduction, p. 240. Further he argues
242
expresses his yearning for a new world: ‘O return! / Pure Faith! Meek Piety!’
Then, ‘The massy gates of Paradise are thrown / Wide open’, and ‘The Saviour
comes!’ who will the Prince in ‘the Thousand Years.’ The experience of the
apocalyptic violence does not amount to nothingness, but becomes part of the
process of ‘New Heavens and a New Earth’. As Jon Mee maintains that
‘Religious Musings produces images of apocalyptic violence to control and
contain them’, Coleridge intends to control or to justify such violence by
understanding it as a necessity for a new world.34 Accordingly, the Revolution
will ultimately be ‘the vehicle’ of a new world.35
1.1.3. Nature in apocalypse and millennium
The question is, whether the non-human natural world would participate in
this process of transformation. Whereas human societies need to be renewed
due to the corruption of human nature, Coleridge does not posit any specific
need for nature’s redemption at this stage of his eschatological vision.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that nature continues to be a crucial element in
this new Heaven and new Earth as well as in the process of apocalypse and
millennium.
We have seen that the poem makes use of nature’s symbols and images for
the apocalypse and the millennium. In particular, the potential for nature to
wield destructive power appears in the violence of the apocalypse. In Religious
that, in ‘a Paradise’, there ‘will be neither curse, nor pain, nor death, nor disease [. . .] all things
are new, all things are more perfect: both the World itself, and its Inhabitants’, pp. 240-241.
34
Jon Mee, Romanticism, Enthusiasm, and Regulation: Poetics and the Policing of Culture in the
Romantic Period (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 145.
35
Robert Sayre, ‘The Young Coleridge: Romantic Utopianism and the French Revolution’, Studies
in Romanticism, English Romanticism and the French Revolution, 28 (1989), 397-415 (p. 402).
243
Musings, Coleridge notes that the universe consists of three parts, ‘earth,
heaven, and deepest hell’ (ll. 401). Religious Musings propounds a Unitarian
idea of God who ‘Diffused through all’, ‘does make all one whole’ (ll. 131), and
is ‘Nature’s vast ever-acting Energy! / In will, in deed, Impulse of All to All!’
(The Destiny of Nations, ll. 461-2). The poet bases the whole frame of the
poem on the omnipotence of God by opening and closing with hymns to God,
and by examining the possibility of salvation only through ‘the Creator love’.
What is implied here is that God ‘loves’ and ‘blesses’ ‘all creation’, which is
called ‘very good’ (ll. 112-3). The earth is thus described as a blessed place:
But lo! the bursting Sun!
Touched by the enchantment of that sudden beam
Straight the black vapour melteth, and in globes
Of dewy glitter gems each plant and tree;
On every leaf, on every blade it hangs!
Dance glad the new-born intermingling rays,
And wide around the landscape streams with glory! (ll. 98-104)
Right after referring to the blessedness of ‘all creation’, Coleridge ascribes the
corruption of the world to ‘human nature’. Although nature is not blamed for sin,
its destructive power is used as a vehicle for an apocalyptic judgment. The poet
makes the interesting comment in Religious Musings that ‘Earth should league
with Hell’ (ll. 67), which reveals its potential destructive power. In both
‘Destruction of The Bastile’ and Religious Musings, ‘the storm’ as an
apocalyptic power is described as hiding in the earth. When Coleridge refers to
Freedom’s power to break the ‘triple chain’ of ‘Tyranny’ in ‘Destruction of The
244
Bastile’, he writes ‘the storm which Earth’s deep entrails hide, / At length has
burst its way and spread the ruins wide’. In Religious Musings, ‘the storm’
‘burst hideous from the cell / Where the old Hag, unconquerable, huge, /
Creation’s eyeless drudge, black Ruin, sits / Nursing the impatient earthquake’
(ll. 319-322). Accordingly, the non-human natural world plays a crucial role by
carrying a disastrous storm, which strikes the world in the event of an
apocalypse.
At the same time, nature is fully integrated into Coleridge’s imaginative
picture of ‘the renovated Earth’. It contributes to the experience of joy and love
in a significant way in the new Heaven and new Earth. When ‘the massy gates
of Paradise are thrown wide open’, ‘Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies’ come
forth and ‘odours’ ‘from the crystal river of life spring up on freshened wing,
ambrosial gales’ (ll. 346-351). At the end of the poem, meditating on the
‘mystic choir’ of ‘Contemplant Spirits’ above, Coleridge’s experience of God’s
love is expressed in terms of the pleasures to be found in nature:
I breathe the empyreal air
Of Love, omnific, omnipresent Love,
Whose day-spring rises glorious in my soul
As the great Sun, when he his influence
Sheds on the frost-bound waters-The glad stream
Flows to the ray and warbles as it flows. (ll. 414-419)
The implication is that, for Coleridge, the experience of joy and love in nature
continues to matter even in a new Heaven and a new Earth. Thus, Coleridge’s
eschatological vision of the Revolution includes an ecotheological perspective,
245
perceiving nature as a crucial part in the vision, rather than excluding or
transcending it.
1.1.4. Coleridge’s disillusionment with the Revolution
Coleridge’s lingering faith in the promise of the Revolution, despite his
anxieties about violence, finally disappeared around 1798 when the French
invaded the peaceful cantons of Switzerland.36 In a letter to his brother George,
10 March 1798, Coleridge shows a heightening of his fears about violence,
quoting a passage from the First Book of The Kings: ‘Of the French Revolution I
can give my thoughts the most adequately in the words of Scripture – ‘A great
& strong wind rent the mountains & brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord;
but the Lord was not in the wind.’37 Then he continues that there is no Lord in
either an earthquake or the fire. Just as in the same letter he mentions that ‘no
calamities are permitted but as the means of Good’, the apocalyptic storm of the
Revolution was conceived, in Religious Musings, as a providential means of ‘the
redeeming God’. However, the Revolution now becomes a sheer natural disaster
without any Good.
If we look at the poems written after Religious Musings, ‘Fire, Famine, and
Slaughter’, ‘The Devil’s Thoughts’, and ‘The Two Round Spaces on the
Tombstone’, published in the Morning Post from 1798 to 1800, we find that
Coleridge excludes any vision from the apocalyptic violence and sees it as
36
See, Sayre, ‘The Young Coleridge’, p. 403, 414.
CL I, p. 396; 1 Kings 19. 11-13: ‘a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in
pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an
earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord
was not in the fire.’
37
246
sheer catastrophe. He still ‘envisages apocalyptic subjects’ and yet ‘without its
millennial counterpart’.38 The poems share some similar patterns in describing
an apocalyptic disaster, with personified calamities and the biblical allusions
from the Revelation. In ‘Fire, Famine, and Slaughter’, the three personified
catastrophes, Fire, Famine and Slaughter, which may allude to the four riders of
the Revelation quoted in Religious Musings, cast apocalyptic violence upon the
world: ‘I’ll gnaw, I’ll gnaw the multitude, / Till the cup of rage o’erbrim.’ The
fifth stanza of ‘The Devil’s Thoughts’ conjures up the image of the apocalypse
through ‘an Apothecary on a white horse / Ride by on his vocations, / And the
Devil thought of his old Friend / Death in the Revelations’, and Coleridge clearly
indicates that this passage refers to Revelation 6:8 in the footnote. 39 Finally,
the last stanza mentions, ‘It was general conflagration.’ What matters in these
poems is that Coleridge did not leave any trace of millennial hope. The
aesthetic value of the apocalyptic can be ‘sublime’ when it is represented in
relation to the millennium; but ‘the sublime merges into the grotesque’ ‘with the
disappearance of any accompanying millennial element’.40
As Octavio Paz put it, ‘like the early Christians expecting the Apocalypse,
modern society has been waiting since the late-eighteenth century for the
coming of the Revolution. And revolution comes; not the expected one but
another, always another.’41 In other words, the Revolution came, but failed to
achieve its aim. On the one hand, some critics point out that by the end of the
38
The authorial footnote: ‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him
was Death, Revelation. 6. 8.
40
41
Quoted in John P. Farrell, Revolution as Tragedy: The Dilemma of the Moderate from Scott to
Arnold (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1980), p. 18.
39
247
1790s the themes of apocalypse and millennium had finally disappeared with
Coleridge’s abandonment of his enthusiasm for the improvement of humankind
through political powers. On the other hand, it has been argued that his longing
for the transformation of the world took a different mode or direction after his
disillusionment. In fact, the generally accepted view of Coleridge’s change from
‘radical to conservative’ after the failure of the French Revolution involves
several key issues. Politically, he gave up a radical and revolutionary position;
personally, he turned from a public life to domestic and private concerns;
religiously, he gradually moved from Unitarianism to Orthodoxy. And yet I
would argue that Coleridge continued to search for the revolutionary
transformation of the world even after the failure of the Revolution. As I have
already pointed out in Chapter 2, there is a continuity in Coleridge in terms of
his quest for the unity of the universe, even after he discarded the idea of the
one life. His longing for a new world continued to captivate his mind, and his
thought about an apocalyptic transformation took a different direction after his
disillusionment.
While agreeing, to some extent, with Abrams and Paley in their argument
about the apocalypse after the French Revolution, I look at Coleridge’s later
ideas on apocalypse from a different point of view. Although Abrams focuses
more upon Wordsworth, his key term, ‘the internalization of apocalypse’, is
relevant
to
Coleridge
in
that
he
obviously
turned
inward
after
his
disillusionment. 42 For Abrams, ‘the hopes invested in the Revolution were
42
Abrams argues that ‘For Wordsworth and his contemporaries, too, the millennium didn’t come.
The millennial pattern of thinking, however, persisted, with this difference: the external means
was replaced by an internal means for transforming the world’, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 334.
248
themselves part of the Romantic secularization of inherited theological ideas
and ways of thinking and with its failure these hopes themselves became
internalized’, but it can be argued that the change is still religious.43 Paley also
gives a remarkable insight as to how Coleridge came to apply a different notion
of the relationship of Revelation to history after 1817: his later apocalyptic
language
is
‘figurative’,
‘leavening
a
secular
exposition
with
yeasty
eschatological tropes’.44 It is evident that Coleridge stopped applying a literal
meaning of apocalypse to history, but it seems possible to argue that his later
apocalyptic vision is more than ‘figurative’ in the sense that it provided the
basis of a pattern of thought which enabled him to interpret and to perceive the
world morally and religiously. Shifting from a literal expectation of an
apocalypse to an eschatological pattern of thought, Coleridge moved from the
dramatic historical events of the Revolution to moments of ordinary daily life in
which an individual can experience a sense of transformation by perceiving and
responding to the world according to such patterns of thought. In discussing
these issues in my next section, we shall focus on both the revolution of the
mind as the process of the internalization of an apocalypse, and the
understanding of Revelation as a symbolic drama and a paradigm. Eventually it
will become clear that this eschatological pattern of thought implies an
ecotheological perspective, because nature constitutes an essential part of it.
1.2. The revolution of the mind
43
Simon Bainbridge, ‘Wordsworth and Coleridge’, in The Oxford Handbook of English Literature
and Theology, Oxford Handbooks Online 2009 DOI < 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199544486.001.0001>
[accessed 1 January 2013], pp. 1-35 (p. 18).
44
249
1.2.1. Hope in a private, domestic and natural sphere
After renouncing his revolutionary hopes, Coleridge turned to a private,
domestic, and natural sphere. The focus of his poetry changes from being
political and public to private, domestic, and natural. As ‘critics of Coleridge’s
early work routinely distinguish between a sublime and a conversation style’,
we need to be aware how the poems of revolutionary enthusiasm differ from
the so-called ‘conversation poems’ in terms of style and theme.45 Whereas the
former, most notably Religious Musings and The Destiny of Nations, seek the
transformation of the world in the spheres of politics and history, the latter put
a ‘new emphasis on personal experience and local environments’ in a domestic
setting.46 Without the hyperbolic rhetoric of the sublime style, the ‘conversation
poems’ talk about ordinary temporal experiences in a natural landscape. His
yearning for a transformation is still there, however.
Looking back on the turbulent revolutionary past and regretting his
‘youthful years’, both ‘France: An Ode’ and ‘Fears in Solitude’ are ‘sermoni
propriora’, where the poet appears to seek an ideal society in a natural, private,
and domestic setting.47 Coleridge opens ‘France: An Ode’ by invoking the purity
of nature in the sense that it ‘Yield[s] homage only to eternal laws!’, and he
affirms that he ‘still adored / The spirit of divinest Liberty’. From stanza II, he
explains briefly the hope and despair of the French Revolution. He believed that
France would liberate the nations, ‘Till Love and Joy look round, and call the
45
John Axcelson, ‘Timing the Apocalypse: the Career of Religious Musings’, European Romantic
Review, 16 (2005), 439-454 (p. 439).
46
Ibid., p. 440.
See, Ashton, The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, pp. 134, 424. She describes these two
poems as ‘a sort of middle thing between Poetry and Oratory – sermoni propriora’. Note by
Coleridge on a copy of the poem, CPW I, 257n. See Richard T. Martin, ‘Coleridge’s Use of
sermoni propriora’, The Wordsworth Circle, 3 (1972), 71-5.
47
250
Earth their own’, but he casts a prophet judgement against France’s invasion of
Switzerland by applying ‘to France the figure of sexual transgression that
Jeremiah does to Jerusalem’: ‘O France! That mockest Heaven, adulterous,
blind.’48 Then he expresses a sense of guilt about ‘those dreams!’ which he
cherished once during the Revolution: ‘Forgive me, Freedom! O forgive those
dreams!’ And yet the transgression of the Revolution does not destroy
completely Coleridge’s yearning for a world liberated with love, in that he ‘shot
my being through earth, sea, and air, / Possessing all things with intensest love,
/ O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there’. Although the hope of the Revolution is
lost for Coleridge, his enthusiasm for the transformation of the world was too
great to disappear immediately. The Revolution failed his dreams, but he does
not give them up. He turns instead to nature.
‘Fears in Solitude’ has a similar structure. At the beginning of the poem,
Coleridge describes a peaceful landscape where he found ‘Religious meanings
in the forms of Nature! / And so, his senses gradually wrapt / In a half sleep, he
dreams of better worlds’. As he sensed the purity of nature in ‘France: An Ode’,
he is now able to dream of the transformation of the world in nature. Then the
poem moves from this private natural landscape to the next part, in which he
raises a critical voice against the violence, caused by war. ‘Fears in Solitude’
was written in April 1798, under the alarm of a French invasion, and in this
second part Coleridge couples the violence of this possible invasion with the
image of the savagery that happened over the last decade during the Revolution.
The poet, however, in the last part, turns from this stormy public world to his
48
251
private domestic sphere in nature, which Tim Fulford terms ‘Coleridge’s
spiritual high ground’.49 Beholding ‘beloved Stowey!’ and his ‘own lowly cottage,
where my babe / And my babe’s mother dwell in peace!’, Coleridge appears to
dream of a better world:
[. . .] O green and silent dell!
And grateful, that by nature’s quietness
And solitary musings, all my heart
Is softened, and made worthy to indulge
Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind. (ll. 221, 226, 228-232)
In her The Emigrants (1793), C. T. Smith also, after witnessing the ‘mournful
truth’ (I.94) of the French Revolution, tries, like Coleridge, to find in nature a
place ‘unspoil’d by Man’ (I.56): ‘And sigh for some lone Cottage, deep
embower’d / In the green woods, that these steep chalky Hills [. . .] There do I
wish to hide me; well content’ (I. 43-4, 48). Coleridge as a family man tries to
find peace and the improvement of humankind in his private domestic setting in
nature, rather than in public politics. Further, in ‘Dejection: An Ode’ (1802),
Coleridge declares:
Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power,
Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower
A new Earth and new Heaven, (ll. 67-9)
This passage suggests that the poet can uncover a new world through his
interior powers.
49
Tim Fulford, Landscape, Liberty, and Authority, p. 236.
252
1.2.2 The revolution of the mind: a moral reformation
Although his vision of a new world in a domestic setting would not last for
long and may have been a form of self-deception, there is obviously a shift of
his apocalyptic idea from the public and political in history to the private and
interior in nature. 50 Yet, this leads eventually to a revolution of the mind in
terms of morality and cognitive power. In his letter to John Thelwall, December
1796, Coleridge announced, ‘I am not fit for public Life’, but he added, ‘yet the
Light shall stream to a far distance from the taper in my cottage window.’51 The
implication is that he intends to retreat from public politics to private
domesticity but is willing to continue to search for the improvement of
humankind. And what Coleridge eventually proposes for the transformation of
the world is, as Gregory Leadbetter put it, the revolution of the mind. 52
Coleridge endorses the aims of the Revolution, Liberty and Freedom, but he
deplores the means of achieving it, its violence.53 He suggests that we need to
enlighten the mind of each individual in order to achieve the aims of a
revolution.
In the ‘Introductory Address’ of Conciones ad Populum, Coleridge explicitly
50
Considering Rosemary Ashton’s remark that ‘the praiser of domestic rootedness would embark
on a life of wandering undertaken apart from his family’, Nicholas Roe’s judgement that
‘Coleridge’s indulgence is self-deception’ appears to be, to some extent, appropriate; R. Ashton,
The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 134. Further she comments that ‘he [Coleridge] who
wrote so feelingly about Nether Stowey would spend only another few months there as a
permanent resident. The fond father of the infant Hartley would be chronically unfit to fulfil a
father’s role towards him’; Nicholas Roe, Wordsworth and Coleridge: the Radical Years (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1988), p. 267.
51
CL I, p. 277.
52
I owe the idea of the revolution of the mind to Gregory Leadbetter, ‘Coleridge and the More
Permanent Revolution’, The Coleridge Bulletin, New Series, 30 (2007), 1-16.
53
See, Lects. 1795, p. 6; he argues that ‘French Freedom is the Beacon, that while it guides us to
Equality should shew us the Dangers, that throng the road’.
253
argues:
‘that general Illumination should precede Revolution, is a truth as
obvious, as that the Vessel should be cleansed before we fill it with a pure
Liquor’.54 Immediately before this passage, he introduces a poem, entitled ‘To
The Exiled Patriots’, in which he praises ‘MARTYRS OF FREEDOM’, who
‘against Corruption nobly stood / For Justice, Liberty, and equal Laws’, and at
the end of the poem he expresses a desperate wish, ‘shall your great examples
fire each soul.’ 55 In addition, Coleridge uses a biblical allusion in describing
‘Pure Ones and uncorrupt’ as shining like ‘Lights in Darkness’, which appears in
John 1:5 and Romans 2:19.56 For him, human nature is associated with the idea
of corruption, and therefore the ‘general Illumination’ of ‘Pure Ones and
uncorrupt’ may ‘reconcile us to our own nature’ by shining like Lights in
Darkness and firing our soul.57 Intriguingly, nearly forty years later, in a letter
to Gioacchino de Prati from 1833, Coleridge reiterates the same argument:
[. . .] from the very outset I hoped in no advancement of humanity but
from individual mind & morals working onward from individual to
individual – in short, from the Gospel -. This in my first work, the
Conciones ad Populum, I declared, in my 23rd year: and to this I adhere in
my present 63rd.58
In this letter he continues to claim that ‘Liberty without Law can exist no
where’. The aim of the revolution, Liberty, was correct, but the nature of each
54
Conciones ad Populum, in Lects. 1795, p. 43.
55
Ibid., pp. 41-2.
Ibid., p. 43; see, ‘And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not’
(John 1:5), and ‘And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which
are in darkness’ (Romans 2:19).
57
Conciones ad Populum, p. 43.
58
CL VI, p. 965.
56
254
individual, Law and Morality, was not good enough to achieve it. As a result, a
revolution should be preceded by a revolution of each individual’s nature.
The question is, what does the illumination of human nature, as a
precondition for a revolution, mean? For Coleridge, it is a moral reformation.59
If we look at The Friend, Coleridge’s intention in this journal appears to be
consonant with his concern about the best way to develop our inner powers
with reference to our actions and reactions. In his ‘Prospectus’ to The Friend (a
letter to a correspondent), outlining a brief summary of his life-long quest
through unrealised schemes, and the mass of his miscellaneous fragments,
reflections and observations, he maintains that all these have ‘one common End
([. . . ] what we are and what we are born to become)’.60 In fact, eleven years
earlier in a letter to Godwin in 1803, he mentioned that he would:
set seriously to work – in arranging what I have already written, and in
pushing forward my Studies & my Investigations relative to the omne
scibile of human Nature – what we are, & how we become what we are;
so as to solve the two grand Problems, how, being acted upon, we shall
act; how, acting, we shall be acted upon.61
Reflecting upon the great promise and the terrible violence of the Revolution
stemming from the same people, Coleridge is eager to find out how the former
turned into the latter. Then he becomes aware of the importance of ‘an act of
59
In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Coleridge argues that ‘the highest point’ of
‘morality’ can be shown in ‘the present state’ of ‘an enlightened statesman’, Lectures 1818-1819
on the History of Philosophy, p. 190.
60
‘Prospectus of The Friend (Extracted from a Letter to a Correpsondent.)’ in Friend II, pp. 1620 (p. 17).
61
CL II, pp. 948-9.
255
the Will’ in that ‘in the moral being lies the source of the intellectual’.62 In order
to ‘determine what we are in ourselves positively’, we need to investigate ‘the
moral worth and intellectual power of the age in which we live’.63 Accordingly,
the realization of truth is based upon the improvement of morality.
With respect to a moral reformation, Coleridge looks closely at the
consciousness or inner mind of each individual. In a letter to his brother,
George Coleridge, in 1798, Coleridge mentioned that he has withdrawn himself
‘almost totally from the consideration of immediate causes, which are infinitely
complex & uncertain, to muse on fundamental & general causes – the “causae
causarum”’, and tried to find out ‘what our faculties are & what they are
capable of becoming’. He loves ‘fields & woods & mountains with almost a
visionary fondness’, and he has found ‘benevolence & quietness growing’ within
himself ‘as that fondness [has] increased’, through which he may ‘destroy bad
passions’. Further ‘he wishes to be the means of implanting it in others.’ Here
we should note the two contrasting attitudes, ‘benevolence’ and ‘bad passions’.
Depending on the state of our human faculties, we are liable to produce
‘benevolence’ or ‘bad passions’. Coleridge was able to become gradually
‘benevolent’ through his love of nature with a ‘visionary fondness’. In other
words, human faculties need to be nurtured or developed so that their
potentialities can be realised in terms of moral improvement and intellectual
power.
Coleridge also stresses the inner powers of one’s own consciousness. He
62
Friend I, p. 115.
63
‘Introduction’ in the third volume of The Friend consists of two letters. The first one, signed by
Mathetes, was written by John Wilson and Alexander Blair, and the second one was a reply to it
by Wordsworth. The quotation is from the second letter, in Friend I, pp. 376-405(p. 388).
256
holds that ‘any new truth’, which ‘relates to the properties of the mind’, cannot
be ‘made our own without examination and self-questioning’. 64
In a similar
vein, in his reply to Mathetes in The Friend, Wordsworth asks his reader to be
dependent ‘upon voluntary and self-originating effort, and upon practice of
self-examination, sincerely aimed at and rigorously enforced’, in order that his
‘pure and high-mindedness’ can be protected ‘from any fatal effect of
seductions and hindrances which opinion may throw’ in his way. 65 In his
Lectures 1818-1819 on the History of Philosophy, Coleridge regards Plato as
‘the Prophet & Preparer for the New World’, whose writings intend to ‘actuate
the minds of men’ and to ‘lead them to seek further’.66 In this way, Coleridge
underlines the significance of the inner powers of one’s own consciousness in
that ‘the very first step to knowledge, or rather the previous condition of all
insight into truth, is to dare commune with our very and permanent self.’67
1.2.3. Apocalypse as a symbolic drama
Clearly the revolution of the mind is associated with the Apocalypse as a
paradigm and symbolic drama. Coleridge applied literally faith in the Revelation
to the historical event of the French Revolution. Yet, in spite of the failure of
the Revolution, the language of apocalypse remained in his pursuit of a vision.
As critics such as E. S. Shaffer, Morton Paley, and Christopher Burdon have
pointed out, Coleridge continued to defend ‘the authenticity of Revelation’ up to
64
65
66
Friend I, p. 114.
Friend I, p. 394.
See, Leadbetter, ‘Coleridge and the More Permanent Revolution’, p. 9-10; Lectures 1818-1819
on the History of Philosophy, pp. 189, 190, 195.
67
Friend I, p. 115.
257
his death in 1834. 68 In a letter to Edward Coleridge, 8 February 1826, he
argued that without the Apocalypse ‘the New Testament would not be what it is,
the compleat Quadrature and Antitype of the Old’.69 His way of interpreting it,
however, changed along with his disillusionment. In a footnote to A Lay Sermon,
he mentions that the idea of an apocalypse ‘has been most strangely abused and
perverted from the Millenarians of the primitive Church to the religious
Politicians of our own times’.70 He develops his new approach to the meaning of
apocalypse in relation to history by interacting with, particularly, Johann
Gottfried Eichhorn and Edward Irving.
Coleridge was introduced in 1824 to the Scottish minister Edward Irving,
whom he described as ‘the present Idol of the World of Fashion, the Revd. Mr.
Irving, the super-Ciceronian, ultra-Demosthenic Pulpiteer of the Scotch
Chapel’. 71 Irving became a regular visitor to Highgate. Their friendship,
however,
was
challenged
by
Irving’s
growing
interest
in,
and
literal
interpretation of, the Book of Revelation, which Coleridge disputed on numerous
occassions. Irving dedicated his book For Missionaries after the Apostolical
School in 1825 to Coleridge, but the poet made a note on the book’s end-paper
that ‘I cannot help, believing, that his [Irving] imagination that the XXth Chapter
of the Revelations favors the doctrine of a future Millennium prevents him from
68
Christopher Burdon, The Apocalypse in England: Revelation Unravelling, 1700-1834
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), pp. 134-5; Paley, Apocalypse and Millennium, p. 153; Elinor S.
Shaffer, ‘Kubla Khan and the Fall of Jerusalem: the Mythological School in Biblical Criticism and
Secular Literature, 1770-1880 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 97-100.
69
CL VI, p. 558.
70
A Lay Sermon, in Lay Sermons, ed. by R. J. White (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1993), p. 147.
71
CL V, p. 280, a letter to Charlotte Brent in July 1823.
258
seeing, that it is a mere imagination’.72 In a letter in February 1826, Coleridge
expresses his puzzlement that ‘I do not at all understand our Friend’s [Irving]
late excursions into the prophecies of a sealed Book, of which no satisfactory
proof has yet been given whether they have already been or still remain to be
fulfilled’.73 In a note on Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourses, a copy
of which was given to him, Coleridge describes messianic interpretation of Old
Testament prophecy as founded on ‘ruinous and fleshly fancies [. . .] a carnal
Superstition’.74 Then he claims that the Apocalypse is ‘a Symbolic Drama [. . .]
I know indeed no Poem ancient or modern, unless it be the Paradise Lost, that
can be compared with it either in the felicity of its Structure, or the sublimity of
the parts’.75 In the long run, for Coleridge, the Apocalyse should not be read
literally, but symbolically, in that it is ‘a Symbolic Drama’ or ‘Poem’. In fact,
there are clear echoes of Eichhorn in Coleridge’s arguments against Irving’s
literal interpretation of the Apocalypse.
When Coleridge was staying in Göttingen in 1799, he had come to know J. G.
Eichhorn, one of the leading figures of Higher Criticism in Germany. It was to
Eichhorn’s commentaries that he turned many times and himself annotated
when studying Revelation in greater detail. 76 The German higher critics
attempted to get at the historical truth underlying biblical narratives by desupernatualizing the Bible, but they encountered difficulties with the Apocalyse,
a book full of supernatural phenomena, yet associated with historical events in
72
A note to Edward Irving’s For Missionaries after the Apostolial School, in CM III, pp. 3-9 (p. 9).
CL VI, p. 550, a letter to Basil Montagu in February 1826.
74
A note to Edward Irving’s Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourses, in CM III, pp. 10-74
(p. 34). See, Burdon, The Apocalypse in England, p. 157.
75
A note to Manuel Lacunza y Diaz’s The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty, in CM III, pp.
415-482 (pp. 452-3). This book was translated by Irving.
76
Burdon, The Apocalypse in England, p. 144.
73
259
the life of the early Church. Being aware of the impossibility of a scientific or
historic proof of supernatural events, Eichhorn conceives the Book of
Revelation as ‘a grand symbolic drama in three acts, with prologue (1:4-3:22),
prelude (4:1-8:5), and epilogue (22:6-11), written by the apostle as a poetic
interpretation of the fall of Jerusalem a generation after the event’. 77 For
instance, in his commentary on Revelation 11:1-3, Eichhorn interprets ‘the 42
months and the 1260 days’ as being ‘fictitious and symbolical’ and ‘standard
expressions for the long duration of a public calamity’.78 Finally, he describes
the Apocalypse as ‘a poetic work’ full of ‘materials of the liveliest imaginative
power’.79 Coleridge generally accepted such arguments in his use of Eichhorn’s
commentary over a period of thirty years, but he challenged ‘the commentary’s
aesthetic reponse to Revelation’. For Coleridge, it was ‘a Vision, not a Poem.Whether divine and bona fide prophetic’.80 It seems contradictory that Coleridge
could regard the Apocalypse as ‘a Symbolic Poem’ and also describe it as ‘a
Vision, not a Poem’. Yet, special attention needs to be paid to the word
‘symbolic’. For Eichhorn, it seemed that the Apocalypse was a mere poetic
fiction without vision. He considered ‘all the raptures and visions’ of Ezekiel as
‘mere drapery, mere poetic fiction’, but Coleridge disputed strongly this
77
According to Eichhorn, ‘the accounts in the Bible of crude supernatural and miraculous
happenings owed their form and content to the fact that the authors [. . .] did not understand
scientific causality, and described in terms of the supernatural what enlightened humanity would
ascribe to natural causes.’ See, J. W. Rogerson, ‘Myth’, in A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation,
ed. by R. J. Coggins and J. L. Houlden (London: SCM Press, 1990), pp. 479-482 (p. 479); J. G.
Eichhorn, Commentarius in Apocalypsin Joltannis (Gottingen 1791), I, p. liv. Quoted by Burdon,
The Apocalypse in England, p. 144.
78
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn’s Commentarius in Apocalypsin Joannis, in CM II, pp. 503-520 (p.
516).
79
Eichhorn’s Einleitung in das Neue Testament, in CM II, pp. 435-502 (p. 458).
80
Burdon, The Apocalypse in England, p. 145; a note to Eichhorn’s Einleitung in das Neue
Testament, in CM II, pp. 458-9.
260
comment in the margin:
It perplexes me to understand, how a Man of Eichhorn’s Sense, Learning,
and Acquaintance with Psychology could form, or attach belief to, so
cold-blooded an hypothesis. That in Ezechiel’s Visions Ideas or Spiritual
Entities are presented in visual Symbols, I never doubted.81
Although the Apocalypse needs to be interpreted symbolically, the symbols are
not merely poetic fiction but are essentially associated with the vision of the
Apocalpse. Here we need to be reminded of Coleridge’s concept of a symbol,
which, for him, is not a metaphor or allegory, but an actual and essential part of
the whole it represents; ‘it always partakes of the Reality which it renders
intelligible.’
82
Thus symbols must not be interpreted literally, yet they
represent a vision because, for Coleridge, they participate in it. Now the
question is, in what sense can this symbolic poem be involved with history?
In his extensive notes on Irving’s Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional
Discourses, Coleridge shows that the Apocalypse as a symbolic drama is part of
the
whole
redemptive
history.
Referring
to
‘the
Brahmin
Theology’s
manifestation of the Godhead in Nature in the trinity of Production, Destruction
and Reproduction’, Coleridge explains that the Christian human history is the
process of ‘Creation’, ‘Destruction’, and ‘Reproduction (Re-creation, Regeneration, New Birth)’.83 For Coleridge, it seems that the process of creation,
destruction and reproduction shows a dialectical dynamic. One stage of the
process presupposes the next stage in the sense that ‘every great Epoch of
81
82
83
A note to Eichhorn’s Einleitung ins Alte Testament, in CM II, pp. 373-414 (p. 410).
SM, p. 30.
A note to Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourses, in CM III, p. 60.
261
Reproduction is preceded by a Destruction’.84 As a result, he holds that ‘the
Creation of the material universe appears as the first Act of the Redemption by
the Spirit & the Word’ and the ‘Fall’ was ‘the necessary Result’.85 Although he
defends ‘the authenticity of Revelation’, he is not sure, in terms of the final
redemption, whether the prophecies of a sealed Book have already been, or still
remain
to
be,
fulfilled.
Nevertheless,
what
he
discovered
after
his
disillusionment with the French Revolution was that this symbolic drama of the
redemption becomes a paradigm for history, in that this drama continues to take
place throughout the grand narrative of redemption.86 In other words, he applies
the process of the redemption symbolically to some great epochs in history. For
instance, he interprets ‘the two great Revolutions’ – ‘the dread destructive
Moments of the existing Epoch, the one recorded, the other predictively
denounced, in Holy Writings [the Flood and the lake of fire’ (the second death
foretold in Rev. 20:14-15)] – as ‘the two forms of Death’, ‘the two modes of
destructive disorganization’.87 Accordingly, the Apocalypse as a symbolic poem
becomes a pattern of thought through which people can understand the world
and their life.
Intriguingly, if we look at 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, we find that St. Paul also
shifts from the literal approach to eschatology to a symbolic understanding. The
early Christians believed that they would see the second coming of Jesus, the
so-called ‘parousia’, but the problem was that it continued to be delayed. St.
84
Ibid., p. 60.
Ibid., p. 22.
86
Burdon also points out that ‘Coleridge wishes to see the Bible as paradigm of all redemptive
history [. . .] he wishes to see Genesis and Apocalypse as a paradigm of the biblical canon itself’,
The Apocalypse in England, p. 165.
87
A note to Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourses, in CM III, pp. 60-2.
85
262
Paul begins Chapter 5 of I Thessalonians by saying ‘Now concerning the times
and the seasons’, but, instead of answering, he refers to the ‘unexpectedness’
of the parousia with the metaphor of ‘a thief in the night’: ‘the day of the Lord
will come like a thief in the night’ (v.2). 88 Implying an inability to know the
times, he speaks of the mode of existence in ordinary daily life, encouraging
people to ‘keep awake and be sober’, and to ‘put on the breastplate of faith and
love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation’, for ‘you are all children of light’ (v.
5, 6, 8). Rather than wait for the day of the Lord, they are expected as the
children of light to maintain and to improve their morality within the context of
the day of the Lord. In other words, ‘parousia’ is now understood as a paradigm
which influences the mode of existence in ordinary daily life.
1.2.4. Apocalypse: morality, symbolic drama, an external reality
Likewise, for Coleridge, the symbolic drama of the Apocalypse is a
paradigm which is associated with morality. With regard to Coleridge’s two
ideas, the revolution of the mind and the symbolic drama of the Apocalypse, I
maintain that they are fundamentally interrelated. When Coleridge changed from
a literal to a symbolic understadning of the Apocalypse, this symbolic drama
88
Howard Marshall, 1 And 2 Thessalonians (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1983), p.
133; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 from the King James Bible: ‘But of the times and the seasons,
brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. / For yourselves know perfectly that the day of
the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. / For when thy shall say, Peace and safety; then
sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not
escape. / But ye, brethren, are not in the darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. /
Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of
darkness. / Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. / For they that
sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. / But let us, who are
of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of
salvation. / For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus
Christ, / Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. /
Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.’
263
became a paradigm which defined ordinary daily life in history on the grounds
that people are expected to formulate their mode of existence according to it.
Therefore, given the paradigm of a symbolic drama, the transformation is not a
final dramatic event, but an experience of moral improvement in ordinary daily
life, which reminds us of St. Paul’s mode of existence in the context of the
parousia.
The images Coleridge uses to describe the transformation of the mind have
religious connotations. He associates it with images of ‘general Illumination’,
‘Light in darkness’ and ‘firing our soul’, which enlighten the mind so that it can
improve its moral capacity. When he speaks of the Apocalypse as a symbolic
drama of creation, destruction, and reproduction, he also presents ‘the Word (or
Logos)’ as ‘Light’.89 ‘Life’ can become ‘the Correlative’ only where the Light,
as ‘a consuming Fire to all Iniquity, is in actu’ (actual, in action).90 Just as St.
Paul calls his people the ‘children of light’, so Coleridge requires ‘general
Illumination’ and ‘Light’ to fire and to guide the soul for transformation. In this
sense, the transformation of the mind is not just concerned with the growth of
consciousness, in terms of morality and cognitive power, but also has a
religious aspect. The revolution of the mind thus needs to be understood as a
crucial part of the symbolic drama of the Apocalypse. For Coleridge, the
symbolic drama of the Apocalypse as a paradigm is fundamentally associated
with the revolution of the mind, which each individual needs to experience in
order to taste ‘a new Earth and new Heaven’.
Yet it should be noted that this internalized interpretation of apocalypse is
89
90
A note to Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourse, in CM III, pp. 59-60.
Ibid., p. 60.
264
involved in an external reality. The internalization of the transformation does
not limit itself merely to the inner and private sphere of a person, but extends
to outward social and natural aspects in terms of morality. In other words, for
Coleridge the transformation of the mind becomes a paradigm through which
social injustices are criticised. In the Lay Sermon of 1817, Coleridge blames
‘the OVERBALANCE OF THE COMMERCIAL SPIRIT’ for causing the ‘trouble’
and ‘perplexity’ of the present state.91 In 1819 in a letter to Thomas Allsop he
praises Cobbett for his criticism against ‘the hollowness of commercial
wealth’. 92 In 1815, Coleridge made a public speech at Calne, attacking the
‘Injustice and Cruelty’ of ‘the Corn Bill’. He said ‘it is a Poll Tax [. . .] the
poorest pay the most’. 93 In 1818, Coleridge campaigned vigorously for ‘the
passage of Peel’s Bill to regulate the working hours of children in cotton
factories’, writing three pamphlets in its support (SWF I 714-751), which turned
on one question: ‘Whether some half score of rich Capitalists are to be
prevented from suborning Suicide and perpetrating Infanticide and Soulmurder.’ 94 Although Coleridge rejected the violence of the Revolution, he
continued to seek the transformation of the external world through the
revolution of the mind, which was not the transformation itself, but an
internalized means for the transformation.95
91
92
93
A Lay Sermon, pp. 139, 169.
CL IV, p. 979.
CL IV, pp. 549-500: ‘On Wednesday, 1 Mar. 1815 F. J. Robinson introduced in the House of
Commons a bill prohibiting the importation of wheat until the domestic price rose to 80 shillings
per quarter. Innumerable petitions against the new bill were dispatched to Parliament, and it
seems likely that the ‘public meeting’ to which Coleridge refers in the present letter was held at
Calne on Wednesday 8 Mar.’
94
CL IV, p. 854. Quoted in Leadbetter, ‘Coleridge and the More Permanent Revolution’, p. 13.
95
Here it may be worth mentioning that, as Jacqueline Labbe argues, C. T. Smith in The
Emigrants also rejected the horrors of the Revolution but not ‘Revolution’, and ‘the public space’
– ‘The reign of Reason, Liberty, and Peace!’ (II. 444) – is ‘reimagined as derived from the
265
1.2.5. Nature and the Apocalypse as a symbolic drama
The symbolic drama of the Apocalypse relate to an ecotheology in so far as
the natural world forms an essential part of it. In fact, nature itself reveals the
symbolic drama. Chapter 2 already mentioned that nature becomes the eternal
language of God in ‘Frost at Midnight’; nature is often presented as a book of
revelation by Coleridge. In his Lectures on Politics and Religion (1795), he
describes ‘the Volume of the World’ as ‘the Transcript of himself’, and
maintains that ‘its [nature’s] every Feature is the Symbol and all its Parts the
written Language of infinite Goodness and all powerful Intelligence’.96 In The
Statesman’s Manual, he also calls nature ‘another book’, ‘a revelation of Godthe great book of his servant Nature’. 97 For Coleridge, there are thus two
Books in terms of God’s revelation: the book of nature and the book of the Bible.
He continued to see nature as the book of God’s language, but the image of God
in nature eventually developed into ‘an orthodox trinitarianism, and Christ, or
the Word’.98 If we look at the notebooks written in Malta, we find that when
Coleridge observed the sun reflected in the sea, he began to be aware of the
‘Logos ab Ente’, or the Word from the beginning, in nature, rather than the
image of God. 99 In his letter to Joseph Cottle, April 1814, Coleridge, having
been asked about ‘the Trinity’, mentions that he ‘accepts the doctrine’ and has
personal’, changed from ‘passive spectator to active director’. Jacquline M. Labbe, Charlotte
Smith: Romanticism, poetry and the culture of gender (Manchester, UK; New York: Manchester
University Press, 2003), pp. 116, 122.
96
Lect. 1795, pp. 94, 158.
97
SM, p. 70.
98
Graham Davidson, ‘Coleridge and the Bible’, The College Bulletin, New Series, 23 (2004), 6382 (p. 65).
99
CN II 3159, ‘Logos ab Ente – at once actual and real & therefore, filiation not creation’; quoted
by Davidson, ‘Coleridge and the Bible’, p. 65.
266
‘in my head some floating ideas on the Logos, which I hope, hereafter, to mould
into a consistent form’.100 Interestingly, in the very last paragraph of the last
Chapter in Biographia Literaria, Coleridge provides a vivid account of how the
Trinitarian God can be descried in the starry heaven:
It is Night, sacred Night! The upraised Eye views only the starry Heaven
which manifests itself alone: and the outward Beholding is fixed on the
sparks twinkling in the aweful depth, though Suns of other Worlds, only to
preserve the Soul steady and collected in its pure Act of inward Adoration
to the great I AM, and to the filial WORD that re-affirmeth it from Eternity
to Eternity, whose choral Echo is the Universe.101
If he saw images of God in the book of nature before, now he can read from the
same book the dynamic relationship between the Father and the Son. In other
words, the natural world reveals it through its symbols and parts.
Nature’s revelation of the Son comes from the fact that the Logos is
concerned with redemptive history through creativity and Incarnation. While
‘the sun, moon, stars, and the very plants and herbs of the field speak of God’,
now Coleridge indicates specifically that he can read the redemptive power of
God in them.102 In his ‘Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourse’, he argues
that ‘the Truth of Christ’ as ‘Logos’ who ‘lighteth every Man’ expresses ‘a
continuous, ever unfolding Revelation in the Natural World symbolically’.103 It
should be noted that Coleridge here integrates the Logos as the Christ into the
100
CL III, p. 480.
BL II, p. 247-248; Quoted in Malcolm Guite, Faith, hope and poetry: Theology and the poetic
imagination (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), p. 34.
102
AR, p. 109.
103
A note to Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourse, in CM III, p. 23.
101
267
act of redemption in that He ‘lighteth every Man’. Therefore the book of nature,
like the book of the Bible, reveals the history of redemption in the sense that
the symbolic drama of creation, destruction, and reproduction ‘express
declarations in Scripture, and facts equally express and declarative in
Nature’. 104 In this sense, the natural world itself communicates the symbolic
drama of the Apocalypse, creation, destruction and reproduction.
In addition, the natural world enables the poet to experience the power of
transformation and also helps him to carry through the revolution of the mind.
As was already noted, after abandoning the hope of the Revolution Coleridge in
‘France: An Ode’ could find in nature a liberated new world. He can experience
a transforming power, which he was looking for in the Revolution, by
participating ‘in the uncontrollable vitality manifested in clouds, waves, and
wind-swung forest branches whose energy fulfills “eternal laws”’105 (ll. 4):
O ye loud Waves! And O ye Forests high!
And O ye Clouds that far above me soared!
Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky!
Yea, every thing that is and will be free! (ll. 15-18)
His conscious engagement with this dynamic natural world is also found in the
process of the revolution of the mind. Coleridge was able to ‘destroy bad
passions’ through his love of ‘fields & woods & mountains with almost a
visionary fondness’ so that human faculties can be nurtured and developed in
terms of moral improvement. The power of nature thus helps him to transform
104
105
Ibid., p. 60.
Kroeber, Ecological Literary Criticism, p. 13.
268
the
mind.
In
consequence,
Coleridge’s
eschatological
vision
after
his
disillusionment expresses an ecotheological perspective in that the natural
world itself represents a symbolic drama and at the same time is involved in the
transformation of the mind.
1.3. The final vision of the universe
So far, it has been suggested that the natural world constitutes a key part in
two phases of Coleridge’s eschatological vision, the literal understanding of the
French Revolution as the Apocalypse and the Millennium, and the symbolic
drama of the Apocalypse and the revolution of the mind after his disillusionment.
Lastly, we should note that Coleridge offers a final vision of the universe into
which
nature
will
be
integrated.
Although
he
abandoned
any
literal
understanding of the Apocalypse after his disillusionment and turned to its
symbolic drama, he still defended the authenticity of the Revelation and
eventually drew a picture of the day of the Lord, including the natural world. In
his Lecture Introductory, Irving gives a speculative analysis of Nature: ‘God
hath ordained nature in its present form’ and ‘from man down to the lowest
creature [. . .] everything containeth the presentiment of its own future
perfection’.106 Interestingly, Coleridge made a note here, implying that Irving’s
idea is based on his own work, Aids to Reflection. In Chapter 2, I discussed
Coleridge’s understanding of the natural history of the cosmos, ‘the great
redemptive process, which began in the separation of light from Chaos’; this
includes the non-human natural world as well as human beings.107 Creation is
106
107
A note to Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourse, in CM III, p. 64.
CCS, pp. 113.
269
not static but ‘contains the presentiment of its own future perfection’, on the
grounds that nature ‘is about to be born’ and is ‘always becoming’.108 In fact,
Coleridge referred not to the imperfection of nature, but to the corruption of
human nature, when he applied the idea of the Apocalypse to the French
Revolution. Yet, in his final vision of the universe, he expects the future
perfection of all creation on the last day. In other words, ‘all things strive to
ascend, and ascend in their striving’, and, finally, this process ‘has its end in the
union of life with God’ in the day of the Lord.109 This eschatological vision thus
signifies explicitly an ecotheological perspective by formulating a final vision
for the non-human natural world as well as for human beings.
2. Wordsworth
2.1.1. The French Revolution as apocalypse and millennium
The term ‘apocalypse’ appears only once in Wordsworth’s writing and that
is in the passage in The Prelude where Wordsworth refers to ‘Characters of the
great apocalypse’ during his walking tour in the Alps in Book VI. The term,
however, has provided one of the key debating points in Wordsworth criticism
over the last century. 110 Though the term is used just once in Wordsworth,
there are various passages which express an apocalyptic pattern of imagination.
The last stanza of the Salisbury Plain, (1793), for instance, speaking of ‘another
108
A note to Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourse, in CM III, p. 64; AR, p. 251.
AR, p. 118; CCS, p. 113.
110
nd
As early as A. C. Bradley, Oxford Lectures on Poetry, 2 ed. (London: Macmillan, 1941);
Geoffrey Hartman, Wordsworth’s Poetry, 1787-1814 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971);
M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New
York; London: Norton, 1973).
109
270
world to which the artist as prophet must point, includes the whole world in its
apocalyptic vision’.111 Book IX of The Excursion (1814) evokes an apocalyptic
vision: ‘That Paradise, the lost abode of man, / Was raised again’. And the
conclusion of the series of Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1820) also asserts an
apocalyptic vision, saying that all will reach ‘the eternal City’. There is no doubt
that the works of Wordsworth are charged with apocalyptic.
To explore Wordsworth’s way of understanding this, reference must be
made to Descriptive Sketches (1793), A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff, Book
VI of The Prelude, and Books II and III of The Excursion, which allow us to
glimpse something of the development of his apocalyptic thinking. Wordsworth
left England for France in the late autumn of 1791, and returned to England in
late December 1792. Announcements of the execution of Luis XVI appeared in
the London papers on 24 January 1793, and a few days later two poems were
published in London,
An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches, by
Wordsworth.112 If Descriptive Sketches provides an account of his first-hand
experience of the Revolution that developed in less than two years, Book VI of
The Prelude is a recollection of that experience no less than fourteen years
after it developed. On the one hand, it is obvious that there is a considerable
distance between The Prelude and Descriptive Sketches in terms of style and
thought.113 On the other hand, there is ‘in part a continuity between an attitude
of mind present in 1790 that was to become dominant by the time the 1805
Prelude was complete, and work going forward on the Excursion’ in terms of
111
Stephen Gill, ‘Introduction’, in The Salisbury Plain Poems of William Wordsworth (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1975), p. 6.
112
‘Introduction: General’, LLandaff, p. 19; Gill, William Wordsworth, p. 68.
113
271
his understanding of the French Revolution.114 Both poems reveal clearly his
enthusiasm for the transformation of the world through the Revolution in an
apocalyptic sense, but Descriptive Sketches communicates it more explicitly,
dramatically and urgently, than the Prelude and the Excursion.
Unlike Coleridge, Wordsworth does not apply clear biblical references to
his understanding of the Revolution, but his transformative experience can be
interpreted as apocalyptic. When he wrote Descriptive Sketches, the violence of
the Revolution caused fear and anxiety. Yet, his Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff
obviously shows that he had not given up hope in the Revolution as he tries to
provide a justification for revolutionary violence. Having heard that on 21
January 1793 Louis XVI was guillotined in Paris, the Bishop ‘hurriedly
composed an indignant protest’: ‘I fly with terror and abhorrence even from the
altar of liberty when I see it stained with the blood of the aged, of the innocent,
of the defenceless sex’. 115 Wordsworth condemns this comment and defends
the necessity of violence:
What! have you so little knowledge of the nature of man as to be ignorant,
that a time of revolution is not the season of true Liberty. Alas! the
obstinacy & perversion of men is such that she is too often obliged to
borrow the very arms of despotism to overthrow him, and in order to
reign in peace must establish herself by violence.116
As violence in revolution seems to be inevitable, Wordsworth sees the world of
‘true Liberty’ coming out of it. He attempts to understand the Revolution as a
114
John Williams, Wordsworth: Romantic Poetry and Revolution in Politics (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1989), p. 44.
115
‘Introduction: General’, in LLandaff, p. 19. LLandaff, p. 33.
116
LLandaff, pp. 33-34.
272
mixture of violence and hope associated with the dynamic of apocalypse and
millennium.
Above all, Wordsworth’s enthusiasm for the Revolution is based not just on
the transformation of the system in politics, from monarchy to republicanism,
but on something fundamental in the creation of the world. One of the main
themes which Wordsworth tries to express in Descriptive Sketches recounting
his walk through the French and Swiss Alps is the sense of being granted a
vision of a primitive innocence. In particular, he imagines the uncorrupted
original state of ‘Man’, which reminds us of Rousseau:
Once Man entirely free, alone and wild,
Was bless’d as free – for he was Nature’s child.
He, all superior but his God disdain’d,
[. . .]
As Man in his primaeval dower array’d
The image of his glorious sire display’d,
Ev’n so, by vestal Nature guarded, here
The traces of primaeval Man appear. (ll. 520-529)
According to Mary Moorman, this section suggests that Wordsworth’s ‘whole
outlook on man had undergone a change’.117 Over and against ‘human vices’ (ll.
486), he seems to encounter a kind of original condition of human nature. In
Book VI of the Prelude, he also mentions that ‘twas a time when Europe was
rejoiced, / France standing on the top of golden hours, / And human nature
seeming born again’ (ll. 352-4). In the Excursion, the Solitary perceives the
117
Moorman, William Wordsworth I, p. 198; See also, Williams, Wordsworth: Romantic Poetry, pp.
51-2.
273
Revolution as ‘The glorious opening, the unlooked-for dawn’ of ‘a new world of
hope’ (II, ll. 224, 233), and this new world is compared to ‘A golden Palace’
which ‘rose from the wreck’ (III, ll. 722-723). In addition, he extends the
meaning of this particular historical event to the whole universe by making the
joy of the Revolution that of the whole world: ‘By joyful all ye Nations, in all
Lands’ (III, ll. 737). Wordsworth considers the Revolution to be the
transformation of the whole universe by associating the revolutionary power
with the primitive state of human nature.
This idea of rebirth is not just the sense of renewal, but is deeply involved
in the dynamic of apocalypse and millennium. One of the key points in the
description of nature in Descriptive Sketches is that it brings out two
contrasting faces of nature: its destructive power, and the sense of joy, hope,
beauty and the sublime. In the early part of Descriptive Sketches, the poet is
absorbed in the beauty of nature: ‘How bless’d, delicious Scene! the eye that
greets / Thy open beauties’ (ll. 120-121), but soon he is overtaken by fear of
the destructive power of an Alpine avalanche. Throughout his walk, he has to
face such fear in that he sees ‘their fiery clouds, their rocks, and snows’
‘hiding’ on the high summits’ (ll. 205-206) and ‘In the deep snow the mighty
ruin drown’d, / Mocks the dull ear of Time with deaf abortive sound’ (ll. 378379). Eventually ‘the avalanche of Death destroy[s] / The little cottage of
domestic Joy’ (ll. 600-601). And yet, in the middle of such terror, the poet is
able to listen to ‘the vernal breeze’, whispering ‘hope’ (ll. 443), and he exclaims,
‘Gay lark of hope thy silent song resume!’ (ll. 632). What he experiences during
his walk is a complex feeling about nature because ‘Abortive Joy, and Hope
274
works in fear’ (ll. 651). Although he is frightened by its destructive power, he
comes across ‘One flower of hope’ ‘For ye have reach’d at last the happy shore,
/ Where the charm’d worm of pain shall gnaw no more’ (ll. 661, 668-669). In
this sense, nature’s violent force is not completely negative, but can be
regarded as part of the process for reaching ‘the happy shore’.
Intriguingly, his yearning for ‘Liberty’ also involves a destructive power,
which penetrates, or is penetrated by, his experience of the dual faces of nature.
The poet is thoroughly aware of the conflict between freedom and slavery in
that his initial joy in beautiful nature is tainted by his consciousness that there
is ‘Slavery’ (ll. 158). Wordsworth, as shown above, is able to envisage the
freedom of ‘primaeval Man’, and yet, this ‘Freedom’ is often accompanied by
‘Victory and Death’ (ll. 537). At the end of Descriptive Sketches, the poet
announces the coming of ‘Liberty’ (ll. 774), but it brings about the
transformation of the world in a stormy and catastrophic way, which is resonant
with the language of the Revelation. When Liberty shall raise ‘his beacon’s
comet blaze’, ‘Pride’s perverted ire / [shall] Rouse Hell’s own aid, and wrap thy
hills in fire’ (ll. 774-5, 780-781). The poet then supplicates:
Oh give, great God, to Freedom’s waves to ride
Sublime o’er Conquest, Avarice, and Pride,
To break, the vales where Death with Famine scow’rs,
And dark Oppression builds her thick-ribb’d tow’rs;
[. . .]
Where Discord stalks dilating, every hour,
And crouching fearful at the feet of pow’r,
Like Lightnings eager for th’ almighty word,
Look up for sign of havoc, Fire and Sword (ll. 792-803)
275
It is evident that images of ‘Death’, ‘Famine’, ‘Fire’, and ‘Sword’, remind us of
the apocalyptic judgement in the Revelation (19:11-21). Just as the apocalyptic
judgement is followed by the millennium (Rev., 20:4), so Wordsworth tells
people to ‘rejoice’ because ‘from the’ innocuous flames, a lovely birth! / With
it’s own Virtues springs another earth: / Nature, as in her prime, her virgin
reign / Begins, and Love and Truth compose her train’ (ll. 780, 782-785). Here
it may be worth noting Westbrook’s comment that ‘Wordsworthian apocalyptics
are deeply marked by biblical intertextuality and what may be called a form of
biblical iconography’.118 The biblical images in Wordsworthian apocalyptic are
often unobtrusive, but nevertheless ‘adjust the texts to accommodate their
force and presence’. 119 On the one hand, in Book III of The Excursion,
Wordsworth still in a mood of apocalypse expresses retrospectively a sudden
and tumultuous expectation of a new world, but such a mood seems to be much
more weak than in Descriptive Sketches:
[. . .] The potent shock
I felt; the transformation I perceived,
As marvelously seized as in that moment
When, from the blind mist issuing, I beheld
Glory – beyond all glory ever seen,
Confusion infinite of heaven and earth,
Dazzling the soul! (III. ll. 725-731)
On the other hand, the vision of earth’s renovation in Descriptive Sketches
118
119
Deeanne Westbrook, Wordsworth’s Biblical Ghosts (New York: Palgrave, 2001), p. 146.
Ibid., p. 145.
276
vividly carries an apocalyptic sense of transformation through the dynamic of
its images, which resonate with the apocalyptic judgement of the Revelation.
Thus, Wordsworth understood the violence of the Revolution as an apocalyptic
violence which would deliver a judgement against ‘human vices and eventually
bring about the ‘Freedom’ of ‘primaeval Man’.
2.1.2. A lesson of nature and ‘power of strong controul’ in nature
Nature contributes crucially to his apocalyptic understanding of the
Revolution in Descriptive Sketches. There is a striking parallel between the two
faces of nature and the hope and violence of the Revolution in that the poet
identifies a destructive power as well as a sense of rebirth in both nature and
the Revolution. Eventually, in Book VI of The Prelude, he equates various
beautiful aspects of nature with ‘Characters of the great apocalypse, / The
types and symbols of eternity’ (ll. 570-1). It is hard to say whether his
experience of nature is simply a projection of his ideas; or whether his way of
understanding the hope and violence of the Revolution is completely subject to
his experience of the two faces of nature. Most of all, nature itself mattered to
the poet. Just before mentioning his landing at Calais on the very eve of that
great federal day (VI, ll. 356-7), he explains his motivation for this walking tour.
Although ‘an open slight / Of college cares and study was the scheme’, he
confesses that ‘nature then was sovereign in my heart’ (VI, ll. 342-3, 346). In
Descriptive Sketches, he shows how he was impressed by nature’s beauty and
sublime. And yet, he was also struggling with the problem of the violence in the
Revolution because the imminent flood, which would cleanse the blemished
277
world through its violence, could not be imagined without ‘a fainter pang of
moral grief’ (Descriptive Sketches, ll. 769). Interestingly, in Book VI, beholding
the summit of Mont Blanc and the wondrous Vale of Chamouny, he remembers
that ‘With such a book / Before our eyes we could not choose but read / A
frequent lesson of sound tenderness, / The universal reason of mankind’ (ll.
473-6). As Hartman suggests, Descriptive Sketches is neither ‘a portrait of
nature’ nor ‘the projection on nature of an idea’; but ‘the portrayal of the action
of a mind in search (primarily through the eye) of a nature adequate to its
idea’.120 In other words, both the descriptions of nature and the thoughts of the
Revolution can be integrated into each other in the sense that the lessons
taught by nature are applied to dealing with the problem.121
The idea of divine power connects nature with Wordsworth’s apocalyptic
way of thinking in a significant way. In Descriptive Sketches, the poet is
continuously reminded of the presence of divine power in nature. He begins the
poem by referring to ‘a spot of holy ground’ which ‘Nature’s God had giv’n to
man’ (ll. 1, 2), and he feels ‘a secret Power that reigns / Here, where no trace
of man the spot profanes’ (ll. 424-425). When we look at his Keswilll letter of
September 6, 1790, to his sister Dorothy, it can be seen that his experience of
divine power is deeply religious, rather than sheer rhetoric: ‘Among the more
awful scenes of the Alps, I had not a thought of man, or a single created being;
my whole soul was turned to Him who produced the terrible majesty before
me’. 122 Further, this power is not only present, but active in nature. He
120
121
122
See, Williams, Wordsworth: Romantic Poetry, p. 52.
WL I, p. 34.
278
envisages a world beyond the earth: ‘For images of other worlds are there, /
Awful the light, and holy is the air’ (ll. 544-5), and, at the same time, ‘An
unknown power connects him with the dead’ (ll. 543). Eventually, this ‘power of
strong controul’, which the poet encounters in nature, is invoked to bring
‘Liberty’ (ll. 774) to the persecuted and oppressed. In this way, nature is a
crucial element in Wordsworth’s apocalyptic way of comprehending the
Revolution.
2.1.3. Wordsworth’s disillusionment with the Revolution
The turbulent expectations for a new world turned into terror and despair,
and Wordsworth became disillusioned with the Revolution, as he recounts in
Books IX and X of The Prelude. At the time of hope, the French are compared
to ‘bees’ who ‘swarmed’ (VI, ll. 398), but at the time of terror they are
described as ‘ant-like swarms’ (IX, ll. 58). At the beginning of Book X, in which
Wordsworth moves from ‘the scenes of vineyard, orchard and calm waters’
towards ‘the fierce metropolis’ of the past two month’s massacres, he describes
how ‘the swarm’ ‘came elate and jocund’ but ‘had shrunk from sight of their
own task, and fled in terror’ (X, ll. 4-6, 13-20). As Morton Paley pointed out,
the image of the swarm reminds one of ‘the image of Satan’s fallen angels
entering their hall’: ‘As bees / In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides
[. . .] so thick the aery crowd / Swarmed and were straitened’.123 In addition,
Wordsworth appears to equate the terror of the Revolution with the disaster of
the plagues in ancient Egypt: ‘The land all swarmed with passion, like a plain /
123
Paley, Apocalypse and Millennium, p. 174; Paradise Lost, i. 768-76.
279
Devoured by locusts’ (IX, ll. 178-9).
As the poet walks ‘through the wide city’ (X, ll. 41) and across ‘The Square
of the Carrousel’ where the dead had been ‘heaped up’ (X, ll. 47-8), his
experience of despair deepens. Whereas he was able to read the book of nature
as ‘Characters of the great apocalypse’ while crossing the Alps with the hope of
the Revolution (VI, ll. 570), the current volume of the terror became unreadable
in that it was ‘locked up from him’, ‘being written in a tongue he cannot read’ (X,
ll. 51-3). In Book III of The Excursion, the Solitary, who ‘reconverted to the
world’ of the Revolution, also reveals feelings of ‘scorn’ and ‘contempt’ for its
‘Shade’ (ll. 742, 776, 785). Wordsworth clearly experienced a growth in a
prophetic voice which ‘enabled him to denounce apocalyptic wrath upon the
world’124:
But as the ancient prophets were inflamed,
[. . .]
Before them in some desolated place
The consummation of the wrath of Heaven;
So did some portions of that spirit fall
On me, to uphold me through those evil times (X, ll. 401-410)
He wishes that the Holy Spirit may descend upon France like the Pentecost in
Acts 2:
The gift of tongues might fall, and men arrive
From the four quarters of the winds do to
For France what without help she could not do,
124
280
A work of honour. (X, ll. 121-124)
Although Wordsworth is disillusioned with the Revolution, he does not abandon
his hope for the transformation of the world. The question now is, where does
Wordsworth turn in terms of revolution in the world?
2.2. The growth of the mind: imagination
2.2.1. Imagination, nature, ‘a new world’
In 1790, the 20-year old Wordsworth and his friend Robert Jones went on a
walking tour towards the Alps during his summer vacation from Cambridge, but
the ‘two brother pilgrims’ (VI, ll. 478) famously missed the destination of their
pilgrimage. When they learned from a local peasant that they had already
crossed the Alps, their long-hoped for vision, without noticing it, an
anticlimactic narrative followed their disappointment. But Wordsworth’s sense
of frustration shifted immediately with the unexpected manifestation of his own
imagination: ‘Imagination – lifting up itself [. . .] “I recognize thy glory”’ (VI, ll.
525, 532). The ‘usurpation’ (ll. 533) of Imagination thus enabled the poet to
envisage the landscape. In a similar vein, through the power of imagination
Wordsworth offers a vision of a new world over and against the terror and
despair of the Revolution. Books IX and X of the Prelude show how the poet
was thoroughly disillusioned with the promise of the Revolution in so far as he
referred to ‘utter loss of hope itself / And things to hope for!’ (XI, ll. 6-7). But
he simultaneously attempted to voice a new hope in ‘our song’: ‘Not with these
began / Our song, and not with these our song must end’ (XI, ll. 7-8). As the
281
exercise of imagination compensated for missing the object of his pilgrimage,
he endeavours to re-write his song with a new hope through the ‘Restored’
power of imagination. In the last three Books of the Prelude, Wordsworth
touches on various themes, including imagination, nature, the growth of mind,
hope, inside and outside, spots of time, poet and prophet, everyday experience,
God and man and the universe, and finally, the vision of Snowdon.
There is no doubt that the relationship between imagination and nature is
one of the key themes which Wordsworth discusses repeatedly in the last three
Books, but I would suggest there is another dimension to this relationship. We
must remember that the Prelude is called ‘the Anti-chapel’ as part of his grand
project, The Recluse, which would deal with ‘Nature, Man, and Society’. In the
last three Books of the Prelude, Wordsworth tries to make sense of human life
in terms of the relationship between man, nature, and God in that he is finally
able to perceive ‘a new world’ (XII, ll. 372), in ‘communion with the invisible
world’ (XIII, ll. 105). It is through growth of his mind that he could attain this
vision, and therefore the ‘restored’ power of imagination plays a key role.
Although the poetic vision of a new world requires no turbulent
transformation of the world, as in the apocalyptic vision of the Revolution, it is
still focused on an apocalyptic way of transforming the world in so far as this
song expresses a vision of ‘a new world’ (XII, ll. 371). It can thus be argued that
this song replaces the disillusioned world of the Revolution by envisaging an
apocalyptic pattern of a new world. His yearning for a new world and his
apocalyptic pattern of thinking do not disappear even after the disappointment
of the Revolution, but persist in a different way. Interestingly, Abrams provides
282
a remarkable insight into how ‘the external means was replaced by an internal
means for transforming the world’. That is, ‘faith in an apocalypse by revolution
now gave way to faith in an apocalypse by imagination or cognition.’125 If the
new world of the Revolution meant the transformation of the actual outward
world, this new song, according to Abrams, is concerned with the internalization
of the apocalypse. But it should be noted that imagination itself is not a vision,
but a means through which the poet can write his song for hope. Although
Wordsworth formulates the song for a new world through such internalized
means, the power of imagination, his song is profoundly associated with an
external world.
As the title of Book XI, ‘Imagination, how impaired and restored’, implies,
the last three Books offer an account of how Wordsworth struggled between
external and internal powers to uncover a primary source for knowledge and
emotion. External objects had ‘power over my [his] imagination since the dawn
of childhood’, but now the poet declares that ‘the mind’, ‘a creative soul, is lord
and master, and that outward sense is but the obedient servant of her will’.126
This statement seems to justify the idea that nature is a mere projection of the
mind, but it must be noted that the power of mind does not disown nature in
terms of its materiality and independent value.127 Rather than deny nature, the
restored power of imagination enables the poet to re-discover what before he
could not see in nature. ‘Having tracked the main essential power – Imagination’,
Wordsworth now ‘returns’:
125
126
127
Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, pp. 333-4.
The Prelude, XII, ll. 147-9; XI, ll. 256, 270-2.
See, Hartman, Wordsworth’s Poetry, p. 225.
283
And in the rivers and the groves behold
Another face, might hear them from all sides
Calling upon the more instructed mind
To link their images [. . .]
With forms and definite appearances
Of human life.” (XIII, ll. 289, 294-301)
Most significant is the phrase, ‘the more instructed mind’, which brings ‘another
face’. It seems that the poet can find a deeper knowledge in nature through the
growth of mind. This sense of growth, in fact, reminds us of Tintern Abbey, in
which Wordsworth confesses, ‘I have learned / To look on nature, not as in the
hour / Of thoughtless youth’. The restored power of the imagination reestablishes a relationship with nature such that Wordsworth still finds beauty
and consolation in nature, but now he can look on a new aspect of nature in
relation to ‘a new world’ through his more instructed mind.
2.2.2. ‘A higher power’ in ‘life’s everyday appearances’
Indeed, it was through this restored power of imagination that the poet
eventually could find ‘a new world’, for which he had been yearning and could
replace the disappointing new world of the Revolution. At the end of Book XII,
he mentions that he ‘exercised’:
Upon the vulgar forms of present things
And actual world of our familiar days,
A higher power – have caught from them a tone,
An image, and a character, by books
Not hitherto reflected. (ll. 360-365)
284
Thus, ‘in life’s everyday appearances’, he was able ‘to have a sight / Of a new
world’ (XII, ll. 369-371). Jonathan Roberts also argues that Wordsworth’s
engagement with apocalypse is ‘one in which apocalyptic language is fulfilled in
the everyday’, rather than ‘a revelation of the transformation of the mind’ or
‘the anticipation of revolutionary bloodshed’.128 In this new world, there are two
main elements, ‘a higher power’ and ‘everyday appearances’. His idea of a new
world refers not to a special world, but to ‘a high power’ in ordinary everyday
experience.
What the poet is able with the growth of his mind to recognise in daily life
experience is the sense of greatness and wonder, which is enough to bring
hope for a new world. In the first half of Book XI the power of imagination is
underlined, and the second half recounts two famous ‘spots of time’ concerning
memory and mind. For Wordsworth, however, the significance of imagination
itself, as mentioned above, is not the subject of his song. Book XII begins with
‘nature’s gift’ and suggests a re-established relationship between nature and
the mind through returning with a mature mind: ‘Did nature bring again that
wiser mood, / More deeply re-established in my soul’ (ll. 45-6). Then the poet
addresses some fundamental questions on ‘rulers of the world’, ‘the dignity of
individual man’, ‘hope’ and ‘obstacles’. In order to find the answers, he chooses
to ‘turn / To you, ye pathways and ye lonely roads’, and seeks ‘you, enriched
with everything I prized’ (ll. 123-5). He describes the bliss of walking or
wandering daily through fields or groves or forests or naked moors, conversing
128
Jonathan Roberts, ‘Wordsworth’s Apocalypse’, Literature and Theology, 20 (2006), 361-378
(p. 376).
285
with men on the way.129 Eventually, in ‘such walks’, he could find:
Hope to my hope, and to my pleasure peace
And steadiness, and healing and repose
To every angry passion. There I heard,
From mouths of lowly men and of obscure,
A tale of honour – sounds in unison
With loftiest promises of good and fair. (ll. 178-184)
This passage epitomizes the idea of ‘a new world’ which can be discovered with
the growth of the mind in ‘life’s everyday appearances’. The rural environment
provides him with the sense of peace, calm, and restoration. Whereas he sought
out liberty and dignity in the grand scale of the Revolution, he now recognises
the ‘loftiest promises of good and fair’ from ‘lowly men’ and ordinary daily life.
These discoveries enable him to realise his hope for a new world. In fact, what
has changed is not the world itself, but the way of perceiving it, which is
dependent upon the growth of mind and the power of imagination. Accordingly,
a new world is based on the integration of mind and nature as it is the outcome
of ‘a balance, an ennobling interchange of action from within and from without:
Both of the object seen, and eye that sees’ (ll. 376-9).
Having touched on the issue of the sublime in the common, lowly, trivial and
mean, we cannot overlook the discussions between Coleridge and Wordsworth
over Lyrical Ballads, which indicate again a significant relationship between
common life and the power of imagination in terms of ‘a new world’. In the
Advertisement of Lyrical Ballads (1798), it is mentioned that the language and
129
See, Book XII, ll. 127-177.
286
style of ‘the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of
poetic pleasure’.
130
In the Preface of 1800, Wordsworth explains more
specifically how he is interested in ‘the incidents of common life’, ‘low and
rustic life’, ‘the beautiful and permanent forms of nature’, in order to
communicate ‘the essential passions of the heart’. 131 Interestingly, in the
expanded Preface of 1802, he develops his earlier statement, suggesting that
over ‘the incidents and situations from common life’ he throws ‘a certain
colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the
mind in an unusual way’.132 When Wordsworth refers to common and rural life
in his poetic project, he does not mean adding some typical images of such life,
but indicates a new way of perceiving it. Later, in Chapter XIV of Biographia
Literaria (1817), Coleridge corroborates such an idea by arguing that
Wordsworth aims:
to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling
analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind’s attention from the
lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of
the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in
consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude we have eyes,
yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor
understand.133
130
131
132
‘Advertisement’, L.B., 1798, p. i.
‘Preface (1800)’, in Prose I, pp. 123-4.
‘Preface (1802)’,
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/Courses/Spring2001/040/preface1802.html [accessed
22 March 2012].
133
BL, p. 161.
287
This comment explains how Wordsworth tried to discover a sense of greatness
in the minutiae of lowly life through ‘the modifying colours of imagination’.134 Of
particular importance is the biblical phrase, ‘we have eyes, yet see not, ears
that hear not’. What matters is not the transformation of outward appearances,
but the growth of an inner mind, through which we can see and hear what we
could not see and hear before. As Abrams put it, Wordsworth attempts to ‘make
the old world new not by distorting it, but by defamiliarizing the familiar through
a refreshed way of looking at it’.135
2.2.3. Apocalypse: a prophetic voice, God, and nature
‘A new world’ does not involve the outwardly turbulent and dramatic
transformation of a world, but, rather, is found in the appearances of daily life
through the power of imagination. How does this idea of a new world suggest an
apocalyptic vision? First of all, this new world is expressed in a prophetic voice
as a hope for the future and a criticism of the present. Wordsworth seems to be
aware of his vocation as a poet-prophet both before and after the French
Revolution. Although, in Home At Grasmere, he narrates that he was ‘no
prophet, nor had even a hope, / Scarcely a wish’ (ll. 13-4), the poem reveals his
‘prophetic declarations’, which close with the invocation of the ‘prophetic spirit’,
‘teaching me to discern’ and ‘expressing the image of a better time’ (ll. 1026,
1030, 1045).136 If we look at one of the famous ‘spots of time’ episodes in Book
XI of the Prelude, we find an interesting way of re-interpreting the past in a
134
Ibid., p. 160.
136
Beth Darlington, ‘Introduction’, in HG, ed. by Beth Darlington (Ithaca, New York: Cornell
University Press, 1977), pp. 3-32 (p. 22).
135
288
prophetic sense. On a stormy and wild day, the thirteen-year-old schoolboy on
a crag was watching intensely and waiting impatiently for two horses, which
would take him home for the Christmas holidays. But, before staying for ten
days at home, his father died. He regards it as ‘a chastisement’ (XI, ll. 369). As
he recalls that day with ‘such anxiety of hope’ on the summit, he ‘bowed low /
To God who thus corrected my desires’ (XI, ll. 371, 373-4). In other words, an
event of the past is re-interpreted as a prophetic sign for correcting his desires
in that the father’s death makes him ‘convert that moment of hope into an
ominous, even murderous anticipation’.137 In Book XII, the vocation of the poet
as a prophet is distinctly revealed. Book XI describes the mission of the poet as
‘speaking of purer creatures!’ (ll. 68-9), and, in Book XII, a poet and a prophet
are ‘connected’ with each other ‘in a mighty scheme of truth’, who are ‘enabled
to perceive / Something unseen before’ (ll. 301-5). Accordingly, the song of ‘a
new world’ bears a prophetic voice which has the ability to see ‘something
unseen before’.
This prophetic tone is also sensed in Wordsworth’s critical attitude towards
urban life and class-based society over and against his new hope. Although
some critics regard Wordsworth’s poems as increasingly turning away from
history and politics, he clearly engages with contemporary social issues even
after his disillusionment with the French Revolution. Like the Old Testament
prophets, Wordsworth is seen to raise his voice against contemporary society.
According to Ian Baucom, Wordsworth’s poems express the moral that
‘metropolitan culture’ is harmful to ‘Englishness, primarily because the city
137
G. H. Hartman, ‘The Poetics of Prophecy’, in The Unremarkable Wordsworth (Methuen:
London, 1987), pp. 163-181 (p. 170).
289
induces a forgetfulness of precisely the skill the poems teach – the skill of
reading and valuing England’s memorial places’. 138 Wordsworth is explicitly
aware of the Industrial Revolution and its outcome with the phenomenon of
urbanization. In Book XII, he contrasts sharply the ‘loftiest promise of good and
fair’ in rural walks with the sickness of city life by dichotomising them.
Immediately after his account of the enlightenment, he begins to criticise city
life:
Oppression worse than death
Salutes the being at his birth, where grace
Of culture hath been utterly unknown,
And labour in excess and poverty
From day to day pre-occupy the ground
Of the affections. (ll. 194-199)
This passage implies that the people in cities were oppressed by poverty and
overwork partly due to urbanization and industrialization. Accordingly, the poet
denounces ‘cities’ where ‘the human heart is sick’ and ‘love does not easily
thrive’ (ll. 201-2).
His criticism is also aimed at the class-based society emerging from these
processes.139 In a letter to John Wilson from 1802, Wordsworth criticises the
138
Ian Baucom, Out of Place: Englishness, Empire, and the Locations of Identity (Princeton, New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 33. Also quoted by Tanya Agathocleous, Urban
realism and the Cosmopolitan Imagination in the Nineteenth Century: Visible City, Invisible World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 6; in an interview, G. H. Hartman also
mentions that Wordsworth is concerned about urbanization and journalism, exposing the negative
aspects of the Industrial Revolution. See, Cathy Caruth, ‘An Interview with Geoffrey Hartman’, in
The Wordsworthian Enlightenment: Romantic Poetry and the Ecology of Reading , ed. by Helen
Regueiro Elam and Frances Ferguson (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), pp.
296-318 (p. 309).
139
In his Wordsworth’s Counterrevolutionary Turn, John Rieder argues that in the mid-1790s
Wordsworth took a ‘counterrevolutionary turn’ from the grand stage of political activism to his
290
privileged classes for falsely ‘supposing them to be’, rather than a part of
human nature, ‘fair representatives of the vast mass of human existence’.140
The Essay of 1815 also states that one of the difficulties in creating such taste
lies in ‘breaking the bonds of custom’, and we need to ‘divest the reader of the
pride that induces him to dwell upon those points wherein men differ from each
other, to the exclusion of those in which all men are alike, or the same’.141 In
both the letter and the Essay, what Wordsworth tries to point out is that a
privileged class is not the universality of all human life, but a part of it. Then he
endeavours to show that ‘we have all of us one human heart’, which is deeper
than the outward forms of different classes.142 As the Advertisement of Lyrical
Ballads (1798) reveals, Wordsworth attempts to articulate this ‘one human
heart’ through his ‘class-conscious experiment with language of conversation in
the middle and lower classes of society’. 143 Eventually, in Book XII of the
Prelude, he proclaims that he has found in the common and lowly life hope and
the ‘loftiest promises of good and fair’.144 Accordingly, when the poet sings a
song of a new world of ‘one brotherhood of all the human race’, it is fully
supported by his critical view of the rigidity and false superiority of a privileged
idea of an aesthetic cohesion with the dispossessed, struggling with ‘the problem of social class’.
See, Wordsworth’s Counterrevolutionary Turn: Community, Virtue, and Vision in the 1790s
(Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997), p. 19-29; Jon Klancher also maintains that, for
Wordsworth, the power of imagination ‘frees us from a materially intolerable social world and
enables us to overcome the barriers of social class’. See, The Making of English Reading
Audiences, 1790-1832 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 136, 150.
140
WL I, p. 355.
141
William Wordsworth, ‘Essay, Supplementary to the Preface’, in Prose III, p. 80.
142
The Old Cumberland Beggar, ll. 146.
143
G H. Hartman, ‘Reading: The Wordsworthian Enlightenment’, in The Wordsworthian
Enlightenment; Romantic Poetry and the Ecology of Reading, ed. by Helen Regueiro Elam and
Frances Ferguson (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), pp. 29-44 (p. 34).
144
The Prelude, Book XII, ll. 178-184.
291
class. 145 But we need to clarify that the outward forms of the lowly do not
themselves represent ‘the universal heart’, but can be recognised as such
through the power of imagination, which is attained by the growth of mind.146
I take this prophetic voice, which foresees hope in the common and lowly
life and criticises the present, to be fundamentally religious. First, his song for a
new world is associated with the eternity of God. Just as the poet can sense
‘The sky-roof’d temple of the eternal hills’ in ‘communion’ ‘with God’ in
Descriptive Sketches (ll. 551, 553), so in the Simplon Pass of Book VI,
‘Characters of the great apocalypse’ are conceived as ‘the types and symbols
of eternity, / Of first, and last, and midst, and without end’, which is resonant
with the prayer of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost, ‘Him first, him last, him
midst, and without end’.147 This view of eternity also ‘alludes to the words in
John’s first vision’ of The Book of Revelation: ‘I am Alpha and Omega, says the
Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.’148 Likewise,
the song of a new world ‘seeks in man (and in the frame of life, / Social and
individual) [. . .] the gifts divine that has been, is, and shall be’ (XII, ll. 39-44).
‘The objects’ which are spotted on ‘a public road’ are ‘like a guide into eternity,
/ At least to things unknown and without bound’ (XII, ll. 145-150). The grace of
God is seen to be present in human life, and the objects on a public road are
said to indicate a sense of eternity. At this stage the poet does not say that a
new world will finally lead to eternity beyond our life on earth, but he clearly
145
146
147
148
The Prelude, Book XI, ll. 88.
The Prelude, Book XII, ll. 219.
Paradise Lost, Book V, ll. 165.
See, Paley, Apocalypse and Millennium, p. 172; the Revelation, 1. 8., ‘I am Alpha and Omega,
the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the
Almighty’ (from the King James Bible).
292
links it with the idea of eternity which is based on the Christian idea of the
eternal God, ‘Was, Is and Shall be’.
Secondly, in the conclusion to the Prelude (Book XIII), the vision of
Snowdon shows that the idea of a new world is deeply related to a feeling of
the presence of God and eventually to the sense of eternity. The ascent of
Snowdon was already the climax of Descriptive Sketches and was re-used in
the Five-Book Prelude. There is no need to underline the significance of his
experience of the ascent, seeing that he retained that privileged position for it
in the Prelude of 1805; here it is the thematic resolution for, at least, the last
half of the Prelude, dealing with the disillusionment of the French Revolution,
the regained power of imagination, and a song for a new world.149 Further, as
Hartman put it, ‘his special poetic mission is made absolutely clear by the
power and character of the episode.’150 The Snowdon vision can be analysed by
dividing it into three parts. In the first part (ll. 1-65), the poet describes his
mystical experience of ‘the universal spectacle’ within the structure of nature.
When light fell instantly like a flash upon the turf, he saw a huge sea of mist,
being looked down upon by the moon in single glory. At the same time, like
‘Characters of the great apocalypse’ in the Simplon Pass, he heard the roar of
waters, torrents, streams innumerable, roaring with one voice. Just as he can
find hope in the common and lowly, he also experiences the universal spectacle
of the glory in nature.
This experience is followed by ‘a meditation’ in the second part (ll. 66-84).
After the scene disappeared, Wordsworth has ‘the perfect image of a mighty
149
150
Paley, Apocalypse and Millennium, p. 188
293
mind’. There is a striking similarity between this meditation and that of the
Simplon Pass in the sense that both of them ascribe the great spectacle of the
scenes to the workings of ‘one mind’ or ‘a mighty mind’. But the difference is
that the meditation of Snowdon, unlike that of the Simplon Pass, explicitly
identifies this mind with ‘the sense of God’, who ‘feed[s] upon infinity’. In this
respect, for Wordsworth, the universal spectacle in nature, which can be
recognised by the power of imagination, is essentially linked with the presence
of God. After this meditation, Wordsworth re-visits in the third part (ll. 84-122)
the area of the mind in terms of discerning truth and knowledge. He claims that
higher minds have the power to acknowledge such thoughts, but nature is part
of the power in that it ‘thrusts forth upon the senses’. He calls it ‘the spirit’ in
which higher minds deal with all the objects of the universe. Interestingly, such
minds are associated with God and eternity as they are ‘truly from the Deity’
and ‘fit to hold communion with the invisible world’. After the disillusionment of
the Revolution, Wordsworth has attempted to create a new song of hope, and he
is able to write his new song through the power of imagination. He does not
stop there, but tries to relate higher minds with the presence of God and
eternity. Why does Wordsworth want to link the mind with God and the invisible
world? It appears that he is trying to lay a secure foundation for his vision by
associating it with faith in God. He proposes five phrases beginning with the
adverb ‘hence’ after referring to the relationship between higher minds and the
Deity. Owing to that relationship, everything is secured; 1) the identity of such
minds, 2) religion and faith, 3) sovereignty and peace and emotion, 4)
cheerfulness in every act of life, 5) truth in moral judgements and delight in the
294
external universe. He describes this state as ‘genuine liberty’, and therefore his
vision for a new world is based on the presence of God.
In the long run, his song for ‘a new world’, formulated by the internalized
means, is fundamentally religious and involved in the external world through its
prophetic voice. Further, it should be noted that it does not overlook the
external reality of nature, but rather offers a deepened insight into it. In other
words, for Wordsworth, this song unearths the intrinsic value of the natural
world. First, the possibility of writing the song is dependent upon the growth of
the mind and the power of imagination, but this internal faculty is affected by
nature’s material aspects as the rural environment provides the poet with the
sense of peace, calm, and restoration. Secondly, the song aims to discover the
‘loftiest promises of good and fair’ from ‘life’s everyday appearances’, and it
enables the poet to re-discover a deepened knowledge of nature. Accordingly,
he now can see what he could not see before. Thirdly, nature maintains its own
intrinsic value over and against the internal power of the imagination because
the presence of God permeates the natural world. Given that the imagination
becomes a key element in creating the song, it might be supposed that the
meaning of nature is now defined by it. Thus nature would be a mere projection
of the mind. Yet, the song develops a mutual relationship between the poet and
nature in terms of the calm of the rural environment, his deepened insight, and
the presence of God. The natural world thus plays a part in this song for ‘a new
world’.
2.3. The final vision of the universe
295
Wordsworth suggests a final vision of the universe in which the whole
universe, including the non-human world, will be integrated into the eternal city
on the day of the Lord. Wordsworth’s thought about an apocalypse seems linked
to the sense of eternity, and eventually his vision goes beyond this earthly life.
On the one hand, in both visions of Snowdon and Book IX of The Excursion, he
refers to the transformation of the present life in that the power of infinity is
present in the whole universe, ‘moulding, enduing, abstracting, and combining
the outward face of things’, and ‘That Paradise, the lost abode of man, / Was
raised again; and to a happy Few, / In its original beauty, here restored.’151 On
the other hand, in the conclusion of Ecclesiastical Sonnets, he claims that the
universe will ‘reach the eternal City’ after being purified from ‘stain’ and
‘pollution’.152 The Ecclesiastical Sonnets are concerned with the journey of the
British Church or of an individual, struggling with the uncertainty of faith in a
fallen world as well as yearning for political stability and a spiritual goal over
and against mutability, decay, and paradox. And the natural world participates in
the journey. The predominant image for this journey is ‘a Holy River’ which
introduces, binds, and concludes the sequence in a circular pattern. 153 If
Wordsworth sets out on a journey, seeking in the sonnet of Introduction ‘upon
the heights of Time the source / Of a Holy River’, he completes the orbit and
reaches ‘the eternal City’ in the sonnet of Conclusion. Although sequence
characterises history, as being subject to mutability and a fallen state, the world
is transformed into eternity beyond time and sinfulness. A sense of the eternity
151
152
153
The Prelude, Book XIII, ll. 70, 79; The Excursion, Book IX, ll. 714-716.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets, XL VII Conclusion.
Delli-Carpini, History, Religion, and Politics, p. 60.
296
of heavenly dwelling was mentioned in the previous chapter, but now we can
show that the sense of eternity is contained in an apocalyptic vision.154 That is,
stained human history can be transformed into a Heavenly Jerusalem through an
apocalyptic power.
The last two sonnets of the Ecclesiastical Sonnets assert by the interaction
between humankind and the natural world Wordsworth’s apocalyptic vision that
the second coming of Jesus Christ will enable us to return to our lost Paradise.
The first part of sonnet XLVI (Ejaculation) refers to the glory and light of God
and the Son in ‘love divine’
That made His human tabernacle shine
Like Ocean burning with purpureal flame;
Or like the Alpine Mount, that takes its name
From roseate hues, far kenned at morn and even
The metaphors of glory and light applied to God and the Son are reminiscent of
those of ‘a new heaven and new earth’, the holy city, the new Jerusalem’, in the
Revelation: ‘the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of
God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light’
(21:23-4). Intriguingly, the second part of the sonnet urgently asks people to
‘seek the light’ ‘at the approach of all-involving night’. What is significant here
is the interaction between humankind and the natural world in seeking the light:
‘Earth prompts – Heaven urges’ [. . .] like the Mountain, may we grow more
bright / From unimpeded commerce with the Sun.’ This intense atmosphere of
seeking the light links with the dramatic transformation of the Holy River in the
154
See, Rylestone, Prophetic Memory, pp. 106-7.
297
next sonnet.
The first part of the last sonnet presents a picture of a closed future, ‘why
sleeps the future’, with the image of ‘a snake, enrolled, coil within coil’, which
reminds one of the Fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis. But ‘the Word’ – Jesus
Christ – yields ‘power at whose touch the sluggard shall unfold / His drowsy
rings’. Then we hear an urgent call in the imperative phrase, ‘Look forth!’, and
the Holy River suddenly ‘bursts through the inert present into the apocalyptic
future’:155
[. . .] Look forth! – that Stream behold,
THAT STREAM upon whose bosom we have passed
Floating at ease while nations have effaced
Nations, and Death has gathered to his fold
Long lines of mighty Kings – look forth, my Soul!
(Nor in this vision be thou slow to trust)
The living Waters, less and less by guilt
Stained and polluted, brighten as they roll,
Till they have reached the eternal City – built
For the perfected Spirits of the just!
This second part has two main features of an apocalyptic vision. Though there
are no turbulent symptoms like thunder and storms, the sense of suddenness is
underlined by the contrast between the stillness of sleeping in the first part and
the dramatic transformation in the second part. In particular, ‘the Word’ who
begins to exert His ‘Power’ on ‘the sluggard’ refers to the second coming of the
Lord, which brings about a transcendent transformation of ‘The living Waters’.
Secondly, the relationship between the stream and human beings is important.
155
Ibid., p. 91.
298
Obviously ‘the living Waters’ shape the apocalyptic vision, as human beings
have passed upon the bosom of the stream, and at the same time they are
transformed into ‘the perfected Spirits’ through the purifying power of ‘the
living Waters, less and less by guilt / Stained and polluted’. At the beginning of
the last chapter of Revelation, ‘the river of the water of life’ in the new
Jerusalem is described as:
Flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the
street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its
twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the
tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found
there any more. (22. 1-3)
Whereas Coleridge points explicitly to the imperfection of both humankind and
the non-human natural world by referring to the ‘future perfection’ of ‘all the
creation’, Wordsworth appears to have in mind only the sinfulness of humankind
as he mentions ‘the eternal City – built / For the perfected Spirits of the just!’.
Nevertheless, the two sonnets show that the non-human natural world plays a
crucial part in his apocalyptic vision of the day of the Lord. This is how the poet
formulates his final vision of the universe, into which the non-human world will
be integrated on the second coming of Jesus.
We have seen that Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s thoughts on eschatology
divide into three phases: 1) they showed an initial enthusiasm for the French
Revolution, interpreting it as the Apocalypse and Millennium; 2) even after their
disillusionment, they continued to seek the transformation of the world, through
a transformation of the mind for Coleridge, and a growth of the mind and of the
299
imagination for Wordsworth; 3) finally, they envisaged an eschatology with a
final vision of the universe, including the non-human natural world. And it has
been shown that each stage has an ecotheological perspective, in that nature
plays a significant part. For Coleridge, in the first phase, nature participates in
the apocalyptic and millennial vision of the Revolution through symbols and
images of, in particular, its potential destructive power, and its power of joy and
love in the new Heaven and new Earth; secondly, nature itself portrays the
symbolic drama of the Apocalypse, creation, destruction and reproduction
through its symbols and elements, and it enables the poet to experience the
power of transformation and also helps him partly to attain the revolution of the
mind; lastly, the non-human natural world will go through a transformation on
the final Day as all creation ‘contain[s] the presentiment of its own perfection’
and it will be perfected through ‘the union of life with God’ on the Day. For
Wordsworth, first of all, the lessons taught by nature enable the poet to
confront the violence of the Revolution in terms of the dynamic of destruction
and rebirth, and at the same time the ‘power of strong controul’ in nature is
invoked for bringing about the apocalyptic transformation of the world;
secondly, the restored power of imagination does not deny the value of nature,
but re-establishes a mutual relationship with it to the extent that it enables the
poet to re-discover a deeper knowledge in nature, which provides him with a
sense of peace, calm, and restoration; however, the intrinsic value of nature is
independent of human recognition, because the presence of God permeates the
natural world; finally, the non-human natural world is integrated into a final
vision of the eternal city through its interaction with humankind as shown by the
300
metaphors: light, glory, and the Holy River.
301
Conclusion
In this thesis, the central aim has been to investigate the concept of nature
in the works of Coleridge and Wordsworth from the ecotheological point of view,
and to suggest how Coleridge’s search for the unity of the universe and
Wordsworth’s
yearning
for
dwelling
relate
to
recent
developments
in
nature. Chapter 1 defined ecotheology in terms of three issues derived
primarily from the works of Teilhard and Moltman, which were then used as a
conceptual framework for examining the works of Coleridge and Wordsworth.
These three issues were the interrelatedness of the universe, the independent
sacred value of nature, and a cosmic eschatology. These three aspects of
ecotheology attempt to locate the significance of nature in its relationship with
humanity and God. Unlike ecology, ecotheology helps human beings to
recognise the importance of nature and to develop an appropriate relationship
with it by uncovering God’s involvement with the universe. Ecotheology thus
forms a faith-based conceptual framework for communicating the intrinsic value
of nature.
In proposing to use this framework for exploring the works of Coleridge
and Wordsworth, a number of challenges arise, mentioned in the Introduction.
Most of all, it is hard to define Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s concept of nature.
On the one hand the ecological and ecotheological readings of Romantic poetry
pose a radical challenge to existing ways of understanding it by developing the
302
idea of nature, not as a mere projection of the mind, but as an independent
material reality, and the unity of mind and nature. On the other the two authors
formed their ideas of nature in terms of the creation of the mind as well as an
independent material reality. For Coleridge, the landscape of nature offers the
source of consolation and beauty, and later it becomes an object for scientific
investigation into the idea of evolution. At the same time, he creates the
meaning of nature through the power of the imagination as he can read the
language of God in the beauty of nature and the sacramental language in the
evolutionary process of nature. Wordsworth also develops a similar way of
comprehending nature. For him, the natural environment plays a crucial role 1)
in providing the harmony and joy of dwelling over and against city life through
the soft, gay, and beautiful vale of Grasmere; 2) in creating the community of
the living and the dead through the sense of beauty, soothing influence, and
egalitarian aspect; 3) in being incorporated into church architecture in terms of
beauty and caring. And yet, he expresses the presence of God in nature in the
sense that sacredness is experienced in nature and the mystical experience is
described as a ‘visitation from the living God’.
The meaning of nature is thus dependent upon both its external reality and
the power of the mind, but it is hard to say to what extent the meaning of nature
is subject to the power of the mind. Interestingly, both Coleridge and
Wordsworth themselves were aware of the difficulties posed by the relationship
between the mind and nature in terms of creating a meaning for nature.
Coleridge was struggling with the passivity and activity of the mind or the
external world and the mind, and in 1825 the poet refers to a battle between
303
two rival artists, the Mind and Nature. Wordsworth underwent a process of
growth of imagination. In his Preface to the Edition of 1815, Wordsworth
provides a sense of the interactive relationship between perceiver and object:
‘These processes of imagination are carried on either by conferring additional
properties upon an object, or abstracting from it some of those which it actually
possesses, and thus enabling it to re-act upon the mind which hath performed
the process, like a new existence.’1 It may be questionable to what extent he
preserved successfully the integrity of both the mind and the object in his
poetry. Just as Coleridge acknowledges the tension between two rival artists,
so, for Wordsworth, the interplay between the mind and an external reality, as
Keith Thomas has put it, may ‘never reach synthetic closure’ but instead ‘the
tensions reinstate themselves, prompting Wordsworth to favor by turns one
tendency over another, or let the tension persist unresolved’. 2 The debate
about the relationship between them will continue within Romantic criticism, but
it ought to be recognised that, even after the power of imagination became
dominant in the works of Coleridge and Wordsworth, the idea of nature as an
external materiality still continued to matter.
The possibility of integrating the two different dimensions of the meaning of
nature can be found in the relational dynamic among humanity, nature, and God.
Coleridge’s lifelong search for unity, which is based upon a monistic idea of God
and the power of love in his early years, and an evolutionary idea of
individuation
1
2
in his
later
years, is
fundamentally
associated
with
the
The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III, p. 32.
Keith Thomas, Wordsworth and Philosophy: Empiricism and Transcendentalism in the Poetry
(Ann Arbor; London: UMI Research Press, 1989), p. 18.
304
interrelatedness among them. A monistic idea of God, derived from Spinoza’s
philosophy and Priestley’s Unitarianism, is immanent as the universal Soul in
the universe, and therefore it enabled the poet to see the universe as one in the
sense that each individual, human and nonhuman, shared as a common source,
the one substance and energy of God. Individuals are interrelated with each
other through God in whom they move, live, and have their Being. Coleridge
also imagined a close relationship between them by arguing that all should be
loved because God loves all. After becoming interested in natural philosophy,
he applied evolutionary thought to his understanding of the universe as unity in
that, in the evolutionary process of individuation through polarity and opposition,
man as the highest of the class has all the previous stages and forms in nature,
through which man and the natural world achieve a sense of unity. Rather than
focusing upon whether this scientific knowledge is valid or not, Coleridge uses
it as a tool for articulating the unity of the universe.
Likewise, for Wordsworth, his on-going search for an ideal place for
dwelling, which goes through three phases, is always based upon the
interrelatedness between humanity, nature, and God. His idea of dwelling does
not simply mean a place for living, but, like Heidegger’s idea of dwelling, is
fundamentally associated with the idea of interrelatedness. It develops at the
level of emotion and psychology and also as an environmental locality. In the
first phase of dwelling in a cottage in Grasmere, the poet is struggling with the
inhuman ways of city-life and the fears and anxieties of human mortality, but he
experiences ‘one life’ in ‘one Household under God’ in Grasmere. He is able to
discover an ideal place for dwelling here, in which he develops a mutual and
305
caring relationship between the dwellers and the natural environment within the
context of God’s presence. Yet, this ideal place is still subject to human
mortality in that he had to go through the death of his brother and two children.
The second phase thus tries to embrace the dead in his idea of dwelling. He
locates the idea of dwelling in the community of the living and the dead whom
are bonded together by locality, emotion, and mortality, and, at the same time,
this community represents a sense of interrelatedness on the grounds that it is
dependent upon the religious notion of immortality in God, and the soothing,
beautiful, egalitarian and epitaphic aspects of nature. Recognising that even this
community of the living and the dead is subject to human mortality, Wordsworth
eventually turns to the heavenly dwelling which is represented by the church
buildings. The idea of church architecture symbolises an imperishable eternal
home, and it bears a close relationship to God and nature because it is based
upon the sense of immortality in God and nature’s various characteristics:
beauty, purity, sacredness, care, consolation, hope, and metaphor for on-going
journey.
This relational dynamic in Coleridge’s lifelong search for unity and
Wordsworth’s on-going search for an ideal place for dwelling shows that the
two poets are able to formulate their relationship with nature and God
metaphysically as well as physically. They are affected by nature’s material
reality but at the same time they produce the meaning of nature through their
power of the mind. They are willing to experience the presence of God in the
world but at the same time they are looking for God who is beyond the world.
These physical and metaphysical dimensions of nature bring about the intrinsic
306
value of nature in terms of materiality, sacredness, and mutuality. If nature can
maintain its own external reality insofar as its materiality has an influence on
the power of the mind, the sacredness of nature is perceived by the power of
the mind. For Coleridge, the monistic notion of God and the powers of
imagination
and
symbol
in
the
evolutionary
process
of
individuation
communicate the presence of God in nature. Wordsworth continues to express a
sense of holiness in nature throughout three phases for the idea of dwelling.
Both Coleridge and Wordsworth also build a mutual relationship with nature
over and against a hierarchical relationship. While Coleridge attempts to
promote the value of nature through the thought of being ‘reordained in more
abundant honour’ and to categorize ‘both great and small’ into one same level,
‘love’, Wordsworth indicates nature’s caring and egalitarian aspects.
With respect to this intrinsic value of nature, it was mentioned in Chapter 1
that, in ecotheology, it is of great significance for nature to be included in the
picture of the final salvation. Otherwise the understanding of nature can be
susceptible
to
being
anthropocentric.
Intriguingly,
both
Coleridge
and
Wordsworth develop their cosmic eschatological visions, ones in which nature
constitutes a significant part. When they interpreted the French Revolution as
the Apocalypse and Millennium, nature is essentially associated with their
eschatological visions through, for Coleridge, its symbols and images of,
particularly, a potential destructive power, and its power of joy and love in the
new Heaven and new Earth, and, for Wordsworth, the lessons taught by nature
in terms of the dynamic of destruction and rebirth, and the ‘power of strong
controul’ in nature in relation to the apocalyptic transformation of the world.
307
Even after their disillusionment, they continued to pursue their eschatological
vision by communicating the transformation of the world through, for Coleridge,
the transformation of the mind, and, for Wordsworth, the growth of the mind and
imagination. In this stage, in Coleridge, nature itself discloses the symbolic
drama of the Apocalypse, creation, destruction and reproduction through its
symbols and parts, and it enables the poet to experience the power of
transformation and also helps him partly to conduct the revolution of the mind.
In Wordsworth, the restored power of imagination does not deny the value of
nature, but re-establishes a mutual relationship with it to the extent that it
enables the poet to re-discover a deeper knowledge in nature, which still
provides him with the sense of peace, calmness, and restoration. Finally, in
Coleridge, the non-human natural world will go through the transformation on
the final Day on the grounds that all the creation ‘contain the presentiment of its
own perfection’ and they will be perfected through ‘the union of life with God’
on the Day. Wordsworth integrates the non-human natural world into the final
vision of the eternal city by involving it with the apocalyptic process of the Last
Day in terms of its metaphors: light, glory, and the Holy River.
For the two authors, this intrinsic value of nature is fundamentally
associated with their understanding of God, but it was not an easy task to hold
that the representation of God in their works is religious, partly because their
views on the idea of God changed and at the same time were neglected or
misrepresented. First of all, it has been suggested that Wordsworth’s early
religious aspects should not be regarded as a mere secularization of Christianity
on the grounds that the definition of religion is not subject only to a set of
308
teachings and a belief system, but is also based upon the dynamic of personal
experience. There is no doubt that Christianity had been seriously shaken
during the eighteenth century by the force of reason in the Enlightenment,
recent scientific discoveries, and the secularization in French Revolution.3 But
we should not be mistaken about the aftermath of the historical process, which
could bring about, to some extent, an unavoidable change to Christianity, but at
the same time could not portray a completely different picture about it
overnight. Intriguingly, James Deboo holds that the perceived chasm between
‘orthodox’ and ‘secularising’ accounts of the religious reaction to the
Enlightenment and the French Revolution is not as wide as is often assumed.4
One of the most significant changes since the Enlightenment is the awareness
of the authority of a subjective mind. In his article, ‘What is Enlightenment?’,
Kant described Enlightenment as ‘man’s quitting the nonage occasioned by
himself’. 5 He argued that the crucial element in realizing Enlightenment is
freedom, ‘a freedom to make public use of one’s reason’, and he coined the
3
In his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. by Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H.
Hudson (New York: Harper and Brothers,, 1960), Immanuel Kant asserts that there is ‘only one
(true) Religion but there can be faiths of several kinds’, pp. 98-99. Such comments imply a
th
critical transformation, or even crisis, of religion during the 18 century. Also quoted by Donald G.
Marshall, ‘Religion and Literature after Enlightenment: Schleiermacher and Wordsworth’,
Christianity and Literature, 50 (2000), 53-68 (p. 53); Abrams points out that ‘it is a historical
commonplace that the course of Western thought since the Renaissance has been one of
progressive secularization’, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 13.
4
James Deboo, ‘Wordsworth and the Stripping of the Altars’, in Religion and the Arts 8 (2004),
323-343 (p. 324). He introduces and examines a few critics whose books are aimed to reveal
how Catholicism or a traditional way of believing in God was still influential even after the
Reformation or the French Revolution: including, Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars,
Martha C. Skeeter’s Community and Clergy: Bristol and the Reformation c. 1503-c. 1750.,
Suzanne Desan’s Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and Popular Politics in Revolutionary
France. What they contend is that Catholicism or Christianity had not been wiped out during those
times by such historical events but was able to stay more or less in some parts of life as it used
to be.
5
Kant, Essays And Treatises: Immanuel Kant, Vol I (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1993), p. 3.
309
term, ‘Sapere aude!’: have courage to exercise your own understanding.6 Kant’s
definition of the Enlightenment entitles an individual to use his/her own reason
in reinterpreting an established doctrine over and against an established
authority.
Clearly, aspects of personal feeling came to have great significance in
understanding religious experience during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. There had been the affective tradition in religion, particularly
mysticism, in the past, and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) may be one
of the pioneering modern European thinkers who attempted to base religion on
feeling. 7 He constantly uses the word ‘feeling’ to characterise religious
experience throughout his major writings.8 In The Christian Faith, he famously
writes:
The common element in all howsoever diverse expressions of piety, by
which these are conjointly distinguished from all other feelings, or, in
other words, the self-identical essence of piety, is this: the consciousness
of being absolutely dependent, or, which is the same thing, of being in
relation with God.9
Having discussed the importance of feeling within individual experience, in his
6
Ibid., p. 3.
Isabel Rivers refers to both Issac Watts (1674-1748) and Philip Doddridge (1702-1751), who
‘were largely responsible for defining and disseminating affectionate religion’ and ‘tried to
balance the rational and evangelical tendencies of dissent’. See, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A
Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660-1780 (Cambridge; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 164-204 (p. 168).
8
Schleiermacher’s account of religion was subject to considerable development over the thirtytwo years between the first edition of the Speeches on Religion and the second edition of The
Christian Faith, see Andrew Dole, ‘Schleiermacher and Otto on Religion’, Religious Studies, 40
(2004), 389-413 (p. 398).
9
Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, trans. by H. R. Mackintosh, J. S. Stewart et al.
(Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1999), p. 12, § 4.
7
310
famous second speech in On Religion, Schleiermacher argues that ‘one can have
much religion without coming into contact with any of these concepts’, such as
‘miracles, inspirations, revelations’.10 Likewise, we have seen that the dynamic
of feeling plays a key role in Wordsworth’s yearning for dwelling, based on the
natural environment and the presence of God. In The Pedlar, Wordsworth
explicitly and implicitly contrasts the traditional doctrine of Christianity with a
mystical experience in nature by explaining how the pedlar, whose religion
‘seemed self-taught, as of a dreamer in the woods’ (ll. 357), ‘feels his faith in
the mountains’ (ll. 216). Above all, he identifies this mystical experience as
‘visitation from the living God’. In addition, in Descriptive Sketches, the poet
experiences a sense of sacredness and ‘power of strong controul’ in nature
which is recognised as ‘great God’ later in the same poem. Even in his later
poetry, Ecclesiastical Sonnets, soothing nature, not the traditional smoke of
incense, is involved in the veneration of the cross in the Church. Hans-Georg
Gadamer made an interesting comment that a ‘conscious break with tradition’
led in turn to ‘the creation of a new consciousness of continuity in the reaction
to this break’.11 In this respect, it can be claimed that this act of feeling within
an individual experience opens up a new way of understanding religion, which
equally demonstrates the depth of religion in a different way over and against
the traditional language of Christianity.12
10
Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, trans. by Richard
Crouter, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988), p. 48.
11
Hans-Georg Gadamer, ‘The Future of the European Humanities’, in On Education, Poetry, and
History: Applied Hermeneutics, ed. by Dieter Misgeld and Graeme Nicholoson, trans. by
Lawrence Schmidt and Monica Reuss (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), pp.
193-208 (p. 197). Quoted by Marshall, ‘Religion and Literature’, pp. 55-56.
12
Wordsworth told Henry Crabb Robinson that ‘I can feel [. . .] sympathy with the orthodox
believer who needs a Redeemer and who, sensible of his own demerits, flies for refuge to Him
311
Secondly, I tried to uncover a sense of continuity in the change of
Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s religious views. They did not identify their
religion with the established Church in their early years in the sense that
Coleridge was a Unitarian and Wordsworth was looking for a power of
transcendence in nature, a kind of nature mysticism. Whereas there is a
discontinuity from the perspective of religion as an institution, a continuity still
can be detected from the perspective of their personal understanding of God,
which is basically involved in Coleridge’s lifelong search for unity and
Wordsworth’s on-going search for an ideal place for dwelling. On the one hand,
the Unitarian and Spinozistic ideas of God enabled Coleridge to attain a sense of
unity, and Wordsworth was able to formulate the idea of ‘one Household’ in
Grasmere through the experience of God in nature. On the other, Coleridge
became aware of the problem of pantheism, but later perceived the presence of
God in the universe without pantheistic suspicion through the relational notion
of the Trinity. Along with the painful experience of human mortality,
Wordsworth gradually moved to the idea of heavenly dwelling, which referred
to the transcendence of God. Although their later views on God focused on the
sense of transcendence, the immanence of God still mattered. In other words,
they were able to grasp both the immanence and transcendence of God in their
later years. Accordingly, their early and later years are not disconnected by
two different Gods, but connected by the same God. In the former the
immanence was important, but in the latter the transcendence was recognised.
(though perhaps I do not want one for myself.’ Edith J. Morley, Henry Crabb Robinson on Books
and their Writers, 3 vols (London: Dent, 1938), vol. 1., p. 87. Quoted by Deboo, ‘Wordsworth and
the Stripping of the Altars’, p. 331.
312
In spite of the gulf between two periods, a sense of continuity thus needs to be
acknowledged in terms of their understanding of God with the two different
dimensions.
Ultimately it has been argued that the works of Coleridge and Wordsworth
relate to three pivotal principles of ecotheology. It is not intended to identify
these ecotheological aspects in them with ecotheology itself, but to refer to an
intimate relationship between them, in that their works offer considerable
resources for further developing the concept of ecotheology. The historical gap
between Romanticism and ecotheology has already been mentioned, but it has
been shown that the two poets, in particular, Wordsworth, were already aware
of ecological issues. Moreover, we have noted the chasm of two different
disciplines separating literature and theology, but they were seen as being able
to cooperate with each other and both Coleridge and Wordsworth explicitly and
implicitly communicate their religious ideas through literary forms. Providing a
substantial resource for ecotheology, this thesis sheds a new perspective on
Coleridge and Wordsworth, which enables us to see our place in the universe
and to recognise our significant relationship with the natural world within the
context of God’s presence in creation.
313
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